The number one disadvantage to using acrylics is that they dry so fast it's hard to get a decent blend between two colours. On the other hand, the number one advantage to using acrylics is that they dry so fast you don't accidentally get two colours blending together to make mud.
A lot of artists on the internet seem to advocate using a stay-wet palette (such as Nicholas Wilton from Art2Life, amongst other notable greats). This is a paint palette where you have a layer of tracing paper, with a moist tea towel or kitchen towel or sponge underneath, reducing the evaporation rate of the paint on top. (I don't know if it's because it keeps the paint cooler through evaporation of the water underneath, or if there is some osmosis of the water through the baking paper).
I tried this technic for a little bit when I was starting out, and found that the baking/tracing paper would buckle with the moisture, making it hard to mix the colours of the palette. Also, with me living in Queensland, these things would be prone to moulding up, if they were left damp for a while.
So I decided that a stay-wet palette wasn't for me, and I migrated to a disposable palette, and then each painting session I would lay out a new one. The trouble was, that not only did this feel wasteful (I was getting through quite a lot of these sheets), but also, after an hour or so, thin layers of acrylic would be prone to peeling back up off the plastic sheeting underneath.
What I realised was, that if I just had a thick enough layer of paint that had dried on the palette already, this problem wouldn't happen. But! As colour is relative (ie: influenced by the colours around it) it got tricking seeing what colour I had mixed and where I had laid the new colours on the palette. I then had an idea. If I paint a layer of white gesso over my already thick layer of paint on the palette, then subsequent mixing wouldn't peel up, AND I would have a white background with which to mix on.
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