How to revive your hake and organise your palette

I'm sure this scene's familiar - it's how your palette looks at the start of the day before you've done anything:

What you see is:

• Your lump of paint under a small clear glass bowl.

• Your reservoir of left-over paint is under a large clear glass bowl

• Your "applicator brush" - your hake (on top of the large bowl) - is clean and dry.

So yes, I'm sure you'll recognise that sight. Meanwhile, this is where you want to be before you can actually start to paint:

It's different - yes indeed:

1. The lump of paint is alive.

2. The whole palette is awake.

3. And your hake is loaded with paint and ready to go.

You’re now ready to paint undercoats. Equally, you could quickly prepare paint for tracing, strengthening or flooding.

And your hake is awake and ready to help you keep your palette organised. It really is a wonderful brush.

But ... it's like a teenager - there's a right way and a wrong way to waking it up and getting it ready for a day's work.

And what everyone needs is a reliable method to get to that point.

Clean and dry

So your hake will usually start its day like this - clean, and dry:

And, to revive it - to wake it up - what doesn't work well is this, dunking it in water like you were trying to wring confession from a medieval witch:

And maybe this won't seem fair. After all, it's fine to revive a tracing brush like you see below - by plunging it in water, then shaking off the excess:

But the hake is different. It's special. You must handle it with care. And in this next video, I want to show you what we do. Just please don't do this ...

... because drowning your hake can cause you all kinds of problems (it's like screaming "Get out of bed!" at a 15 year-old).

There's a gentler, slower, more effective way instead.

This method you're about to see, it revives your hake and loads it. It also helps you organise your palette:

How to revive your hake and organise your palette

Here's how we do it. It takes a bit of time. But it sets you up for success.

Effective - and fast

Now this video runs for five minutes.

The reason is, we did it all step-by-step.

The great thing is, when you know what you're doing, you can do it all in four three two minutes.

Yes, just 2 minutes.

Which is fast.

My point is: it won't take you long to "swap water for paint" and organise your palette. Not long at all. 

And what you get in return is: a revived hake and an organised palette.

AND ALSO ... perfect paint for undercoating or tracing.