Not all painters use color palettes. The stippling painter Shura used tin covers instead of color palettes; Picasso flirted in the newspaper. In addition, using glass as the color palette has two advantages: first, to prevent the unused pigment from drying and scaling, the glass plate can be immersed in water for storage after use. The other is to replace the backing under the glass plate (white paper, gray paper or linen, etc.) according to the background color of the picture. However, the glass plate must be placed on a flat and stable support.

The color of the palette used to be brown, because most of the early oil paintings used dark background, so it is easy to mix colors accurately. For example, white and gray palettes can be used if light background is used;

In the mask dyeing stage of transparent painting, it is better to use a white palette to adjust the transparent color, so that the effect after painting can be accurately estimated;