For twenty-two years I painted out of whatever palette was cheapest, and for twenty-two years I spent part of every Saturday morning scraping dried paint out of it with a fingernail. About a year ago I started using the Mr. Pen airtight watercolor palette with a lid, and the scraping stopped. It is a plastic rectangular tray, 10.5 by 5 by 1 inches, with 18 wells and two mixing areas, and the lid clasps shut and stays shut. That is the whole idea. Not a fancy palette. A closed one.
I taught middle school art for 31 years. Now I teach six adults on Thursday evenings at the library branch, and I paint most mornings at a folding table in my spare bedroom, about two hours before the day starts. The mistake I see in both rooms is the same: squeeze out good paint, paint for an hour, leave the rest to dry into little rocks. A lid will not make anybody a better painter. What it does is let you keep the paint you already set out.
The paint you squeeze out at 8 a.m. can still be there tomorrow
18 wells, two mixing areas, and a lid that clasps closed so the water in your paint has nowhere to go.
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This is the one that surprised me. I load the wells on a Sunday, shut the lid, and Monday morning the paint lifts with a wet brush the way it did when I set it out. Not soupy, not hard. The lid is airtight, so the water in the paint has nowhere to go. On my old open palette that same paint would have skinned over by lunchtime. If you paint in short sessions like I do, this one detail changes how much paint you throw away.
You stop squeezing out the same three colors every session
Here is the arithmetic nobody does. When paint dries out, you squeeze fresh. Two small dabs of ultramarine and burnt sienna, three times a week, and by the end of the month you have emptied tubes you barely painted with. I use less paint now, not because I am being careful, but because there is nothing to replace. My blues and browns last noticeably longer. That is the Mr. Pen palette earning its keep in the plainest possible way.
18 wells keep your greens out of your reds
On a flat mixing tray everything runs together. The 18 individual wells hold each color apart, so the pthalo green stays pthalo green and does not pick up a stray bit of red from the next puddle over. For a beginner that matters more than brush quality. My Thursday class paints around one long table, and the people who fight mud the most are always the ones squeezing onto a plate or the lid of a tin.
Two mixing areas keep warm mixes and cool mixes apart
The two large mixing areas are the part I did not expect to use. I mix a warm wash in one and a cool wash in the other and they stay separate until I put them on the paper. When you mix in a single puddle, a warm gray and a cool gray become the same muddy gray by the third dip of the brush. Two areas means two decisions that do not cancel each other out.
The clasp holds through a tote bag and a car ride
The lid has a sturdy clasp on it, and it stays fastened. I carry the palette in a tote to the library on Thursdays along with paper and brushes, and I have not once opened it to find paint smeared across the inside of the lid and nothing left in the wells. Before this I used a metal palette for about four years with a lid that flipped open in the bag twice. Twice was enough.
It closes in one motion when the cat arrives
My cat is nine, orange, about twelve pounds, and he likes the warm end of the table. He walked through a wet painting exactly once and tracked ultramarine across a finished sheet, which is what pushed me to buy a palette with a lid in the first place. One hand on the lid, clasp pressed, and the paint is out of reach. No folding, no clamping, no hunting for a lid that slid under the table.
A two-pump mist brings the paint back to workable
I keep a small spray bottle on the table. Two pumps over the wells before I start, lid open, wait a minute, and the paint softens enough to lift cleanly on the brush. With the lid on, that mist stays in the tray instead of evaporating into the room. It is a small habit and I do it every single session. It is the difference between sitting down to paint and sitting down to rehydrate.
It fits a folding table that has to be cleared for dinner
The Mr. Pen palette is ten and a half inches long, five inches wide and an inch deep. That sits on my folding table beside a 7 by 10 block of cold press paper with room left over for a water jar. If your painting space is a corner of a kitchen table that gets wiped down every evening, footprint is not a small detail. It stores flat, and the lid means nothing dries out while it sits.
Cleanup is two minutes if you never let it soak
Hand wash only, and do not let it soak for a long stretch. I learned that the ordinary way: a palette left in a sink of water for ten minutes comes out fine, one forgotten overnight does not. Warm water, a soft cloth, a little patience in the corners, then dry it and leave the lid open for an hour before you load it again. Two minutes once a week keeps the wells smooth enough to lift clean color from.
Your good paint travels with you instead of drying at home
Four years ago I started carrying a water brush and a small sketchbook in a zip pouch. The pouch holds this palette now too. It is light, it shuts, and it does not leak into the paper beside it. Waiting rooms, a park bench, my sister's kitchen up in Hagerstown. I load six wells with whatever the day needs, close the lid, and paint wherever I end up. That is more painting than I did when the good paint stayed home.
I load the wells on Sunday, and Monday morning the paint still lifts on a wet brush the way it did when I set it out.
What I'd Skip
Two things I would not bother with. I would not buy a second palette just to hold a second family of colors, because 18 wells is already more than I can keep loaded and honest with myself about. And I would skip any lidded palette, this one included, if you paint once a month. Paint sitting three weeks in a closed tray will still turn on you. The lid buys you days, not seasons. If you only get to the table now and then, squeeze out small amounts and accept the waste.
If your paint is dry before you get back to it, this is the fix
The Mr. Pen airtight palette with 18 wells and two mixing areas. Clasp the lid and your mixed color is still there at the next session.
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