Want Easier Color Mixing? Try This Acrylic Palette Setup
Acrylics dry fast. Depending on your personality, that can feel like a gift or a constant race against the clock.
But no matter where you land, the reality is the same: if you want to mix good color without getting frustrated, you need a system that keeps your paints accessible and workable.
For Annie O’Brien Gonzales (Ep.1), that system starts in an unexpected place… the craft store.
Gonzales thinks about her palette in two parts:
where she mixes, and
where she keeps her clean color ready to pull from.
The second part is where most acrylic painters get stuck. Clean color usually lives in the tube. But every time you need to squeeze out another bit, you’re slowing yourself down. Even worse, the stop-and-start rhythm makes color mixing feel clunky rather than flowy.
So Gonzales ditched the tubes… at least for her everyday palette.
Instead, she keeps her clean colors in a bead box.
Yes, the kind meant for jewelry-making supplies.
She squeezes her paints into the individual compartments, closes the lid, and suddenly she has a tidy, portable, snap-shut system that keeps her colors from drying out. A light spritz of water and regular use are all it takes to keep those paints workable.
With her clean color always ready to go, she can mix quickly without fighting the clock. And that convenience is a big part of how her color mixing became so confident and intuitive.
Put it to Practice:
You can absolutely keep your pigments in tubes and then lay them out as you need them. But if that is putting too many barriers between you and color mixing, think about if there are easier ways to access your clean color.
Watercolors and oil painters will both often will keep their clean color in the wells around their mixing tray.
But because of the fast drying time, acrylic painters can’t do that nearly as easily. They have to adapt.
A bead box might be the bridge: ready-to-use, organized color you can pull from instantly, helping you mix more confidently and keep your painting session flowing.