Some painting equipment ideas

 

So, a couple of ideas that I have picked up from Youtube. 

The first is a silicon ice tray for holding paint. Sometimes I do not need a wet palette, maybe for small paint jobs or when using speed paints. In those situations used to squeeze out a few drops onto a plastic craft paint tray. However I have found that these are tough things to clean. Sometimes I just use scrap plastic miniature cases, but I am not buying many blister packs these days. So when I spotted someone talking about how easy it was to use & clean silicon kids toys I took notice. A quick search at some local dollar stores did not produce any suitable toys, but a visit to the household aisle netted me a grey.white ice tray. The colour is a nice neutral colour so it does not distort the appearance of paint poured into it, it is very flexible and therefore allows for easy cleaning.

Of course I have selected pictures that show it in a dirty state, but rest assured once dry the paint easily comes out of the tray. You can see the size of the hexes compared to the paint containers. I suspect one could easily expand some of the hexes by cutting out a wall or two, but so far I have had no need to expand.

It also came in handy when I was testing out which colour to use on some alien figures. I know it sound silly but it was a quick way to keep track of which colour was what by placing the bottles into a hex next to the squeezed out paint.

The second item is an alternative to using paper towel to remove paint off a brush prior to dry brushing. A Lego base plate (or in this case an inexpensive knock off gives one a surface to dry brush prior to dry brushing a model. It means that as you rub off some of the paint on the brush onto the plastic sheet you can get a good sense of how much paint you still ave on your brush.

I bought two different sizes for my testing of this idea. It really does not matter much what size you use really, it is just a matter of space that you have available. I have no intention of cleaning these and I doubt that it would be easy or necessary. In the past I used to use some cardboard that had some texture on it (from previous paint testing) but this does seem to work a little better. One could also add bricks to this to give a variety of shapes/surfaces.

I bought the ice cube tray at Dollarama ($4.00) and the imitation Lego at Dollar tree.(maybe $1.50)