When it comes to oil painting I've tried using just about every type of palette you can imagine: wooden ones, plastic ones, glass ones, bought ones and homemade ones. Now, finally, I've settled on using disposable paper ones.
Like much of kit in the studio, palettes are a matter of personal preference. I liked the traditional feel of wooden ones, the whiteness of plastic ones and the smoothness of glass ones, but in the end I always got tired of cleaning them at the end of a session. Oil painting is messy enough without the added chore of scraping and wiping paint from your palette. I would sometimes forget to clean them too, and if I'd been using fast drying mixes of oil colour then that was the end of that palette. So, after destroying yet another plastic palette I decided to give the paper ones a go.
They come in pads of tear-out sheets in various sizes, and I usually buy the largest possible since it's more economical and gives me a good area for mixing. I can get good mileage from a single sheet and for a small or medium sized painting one or two sheets is usually enough. It's also handy being able to keep your palette from the previous day if you want to remind yourself of what colour mixes you were using.
Paper palettes do mean an additional expense of course, but I think this is largely offset by what you save on cleaning materials and, more importantly, the big time savings they bring. So if you paint in oils or acrylics and fancy saving yourself a bit of time and effort, I can certainly recommend them.
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