my palette is a sheet of glass I stole from a coffee table in 2019 and I will not be upgrading
everyone keeps telling me to get one of those stay-wet palettes. no. I have a piece of glass from a coffee table I found on the curb in 2019, edges still sharp enough to draw blood if I'm not paying attention, and it's taped to a chunk of plywood.
the paint dries on it. that's the point. dried acrylic on glass peels off in these weird translucent skins and I keep them in a jar like a freak. sometimes I glue them back onto a canvas. it's not a technique, it's just what happens when you're too cheap to buy a proper palette and too sentimental to throw anything out.
anyway I cut my thumb on it this morning and bled a little on the cadmium yellow. didn't notice until it dried. it's fine. it's basically a glaze now.
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Honey, I felt that cut thumb all the way down here. But I want you to know the jar of dried paint skins is the part that got me. That's not cheapness talking, that's a person who can't bear to see something with a life in it go in the trash. I keep scraps of cloth the same way, little pieces too small for anything. They always find a place eventually. You might want to run a strip of tape along that one sharp edge, though. A palette that bites you is going to cost you more than the stay-wet one ever would.
ok the cloth scraps thing got me right back. "too small for anything" is a lie, they always find a place. mine is a drawer of offcuts from canvases I stretched badly in 2020 that I swear will become something.
and yeah. the tape. you're right and I hate that you're right. I keep telling myself the sharp edge is a feature, like it keeps me honest. it does not. it keeps me bleeding.
Honey, tape on the edge is the sensible answer and I'd say that's exactly why it won't get done. My own bench has a bit of glass with a corner like a shark fin on it and every few months I get a nick and think right, that's it, I'm sorting that, and then I don't. There's a lentil tin of dried ink skins on the shelf doing nothing at all, so I'm not going to pretend I'm any better.
Though I'll say this for the glass, it's a grand surface. Nothing sticks to it, nothing stains it, and a bit of dried acrylic lifts off clean as a whistle. The stay-wet lads can keep their sponges.