should you clean your watercolour palette?
I cleaned my watercolour palette once and I swore I’d never do it again. Here’s why I don’t recommend cleaning your watercolour paints off your palette and why I often don’t rinse my brush in between changing colours.
In my weekly watercolour classes in Kingscliff and my art lessons online, I often demonstrate different watercolour painting techniques with a group of students watching. And often, I’ll hear students gasp when I dip my brush into one colour and then another colour in my watercolour palette, without rinsing my brush in between!
(I love the gasp by the way. It’s cute hearing students so concerned about the integrity of their pigments! And I love showing them what I will show you now: that watercolour paints are very forgiving, even for the messiest of painters!)
You see, you don’t have to worry about rinsing your brush every time you change colours from your palette. It’s no always necessary. And sometimes, while painting a large loose background for example, we don’t have time to rinse our brush! When it comes to watercolour painting, we may be racing the drying time, the evaporation of paint on paper and we want to conserve every second we can.
So cleaning your brush in between changing colours is not necessary, as long as you follow a few simple rules:
use a watercolour palette with deep wells.
If you haven’t read my article about which palette is best for watercolour, you may want to read that for the full explanation. But basically, deep wells allows you to squeeze out fresh watercolour paint onto the high side of your watercolour palette well, and then any mucky, wet paint will fall to the bottom of the well. Thus you’ll have two types of paint in each well - fresh and thick and pure on the top, and wet or dirtier paint at the bottom. I’ve included an image of what I mean in my aforementioned article (as well as my tip on how to remember your watercolour pigment name).
Always dip your watercolour brush into the same side of the paint blob.
When it comes to watercolour painting, it’s the little steps that can make a big difference. When I squeeze out a fresh dollop of paint, I always dip my brush in from one side (rather than smack bang in the top). That way the other side always of that little dollop always stays fresh and pure. So if I have another colour on my brush and dip it into my fresh paint blob, I will still have clean, unadulterated paint on the other side. This is particularly handy on some of those lighter pigments that have less tinting strength, like a lot of the yellow colours.
3. Be aware of the tinting strength of different watercolour pigments.
Some colours, like Phthalo blue for example, have quite high tinting strengths, so a little bit of them will go a long way if you have them on your brush and dip them into a weaker colour, like aureolin yellow or white gouache even. So sometimes if I’ve got a high tinting strength pigment on my brush, I’ll wash it off before dipping into another colour.
4. learn to love and use mucky colours.
You may love vibrant bold colours and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But we need those mucky, murky colours that make the vibrant colours to really pop and sing! Often in my watercolour classes in Kingscliff and even in my online painting classes Australia, students will hear me say “just use some muck”. Mix a little mucky colour with a pure colour and you’ll get a lovely dull or grey version of the original colour. These can be lovely! I love using “muck” from my palette when mixing greens for leaves and landscapes. If we mix phthalo blue and aureolin yellow together to make a green, it’s often far too cartoony green and doesn’t seem natural at all. But add some muck and bingo, you’ve got a delicious, natural green.
But ok, yes I admit sometimes a palette has too much muck and needs a LITTLE clean.
Sometimes my palette gets so dirty I can’t even tell what colour it is underneath. That’s when a little clean is due. Also, sometimes I may clean my palette to make way for a new pigment. The cleaning process is simple it only takes a minute to take off the top layer of mucky paint and discover your original pure colour underneath:
Here’s how I clean a dirty watercolour palette:
Let your paints dry in the palette. Then get a damp cloth and wipe over the dried paint. This will take off the top layer of “muck” and reveal the clean, pure pigment underneath (as shown in the video)
If a palette is particularly dirty or you want to introduce a new colour to your palette and need a completely clean palette well or area, I put a little water in the palette for 30 seconds - 1 minute to help the top layer soak in a bit, then pour the water out and use the damp cloth to rub off the top layer of paint.
I hope that helps you feel a little more relaxed when it comes to watercolour painting. It is a very forgiving medium and can handle a lot of abuse!
If you’d like more tips on using watercolour, I have a free watercolour masterclass and painting tutorial online that you might like to try (below) as well as my usual online painting classes Australia which I call my “Artory Academy”.
FREE WATERCOLOUR MASTERCLASS
Try Anne’s online beginner watercolour painting introductory course for free.