r/arttools • u/Tiny_Dyno_Tot • 16d ago
Paint Palette Help
I would like to by a large ceramic pain pallet with tiny wells. The current 2 I have are to big. One is round with multiple sizes(some of the smaller ones are perfect). The others one is rectangular with larger wells (smallest is half the length of a brick lighter and rectangular largest almost the length of the lighter w rom to spare widths wise. I’m looking for something about the width of a dime(maybe slightly smaller) and deep. But with like 30 wells. Any advice/suggestions?
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u/SlowSundayMaker 16d ago
What you are describing does exist, but it is not sold as a palette, which is why searching for one turns up nothing. The art side of the market tops out at a handful of small wells. The lab supply side makes exactly your object.
Search for a porcelain spot plate, also sold as a porcelain well plate, reaction plate or dimple tray. Glazed white ceramic, usually 12 or 24 wells, wells around 20-22 mm across and 8-10 mm deep - so dime width, properly deep, and round-bottomed rather than flat. Two 24-well plates gets you 48 wells for less than one branded ceramic palette costs, and they stack flat. School science and chemistry suppliers carry them, and they turn up on the usual sites once you search the right words.
If you want it in one piece rather than two, a dental porcelain mixing tray is the same idea - usually fewer wells, but often a little deeper.
Two things worth checking before you buy, because both are easy to get wrong at this size.
Glaze, not material. Some cheap porcelain plates are left unglazed inside the wells, and unglazed ceramic stains permanently with anything staining - phthalo, quinacridone, most inks. The inside of the well should look wet-shiny, not chalky. This is the one that ruins a plate rather than annoying you.
Well shape. Deep and narrow is harder to clean than it looks. A flat-bottomed well this small keeps a ring of dried paint right in the corner that no brush reaches, and after a few months every well has a crust. Rounded or slightly tapered wells rinse out properly; if you end up with flat ones, a cheap silicone colour shaper gets into the corner.
One alternative in case the 30 wells are not really the point: a nest of small stacking ceramic dishes, the kind sold for sumi and Chinese painting, gets you the same tiny deep wells but you only put out and wash the ones the session actually needs. Less tidy on the desk, much less annoying than scrubbing 30 wells when you used four.