William Moore asked some questions in the comments and I thought I’d just make another entry to answer them. I’m always willing to answer questions. I have no closely guarded secrets and there isn’t as much info out there about acrylic methods as with oils.

Do you use either a retarder or Open when painting?
I use Golden OPEN acrylics when painting plein airs because they tolerate cold temperatures. I’ve painted down to 7° + wind and they worked great. Regular acrylics stop working for me around 50°. Something goofy happens with the binder and they get stringy and gummy. Neither type of acrylics work well in wind so oils are my go-to medium if it’s windy. No retarder. That stuff is terrible plus it just adds nuisance work to the prep having to mix things into paint prior to working. At home, I only use regular acrylics though, nothing added, no fancy sprays or anything.

I like to mix back into mixtures on the palette, but with acrylic they dry quickly (especially outside) leaving a film that doesn’t reconstitute to paint but trash.
The OPENs stay wet on my palette for a long time (days, maybe even a week inside my french easel, if I put them in a covered box they’d probably last indefinitely). Thin mixtures on the palette will dry quicker if there is a breeze or if there is sun on my palette, but usually everything is still wet after I get home. Sometimes lately I’ll add molding paste for some body because OPENs are kinda thin. This accelerates the drying drastically.

You may like this acrylic paint by Chroma. It’s called Interactives. They sent me some free samples. You can re-activate dried paint with some special medium so those dried piles on your palette can still be used. It was a little complicated for me but seemed like an interesting idea.

Does keeping the palette wet with spray bottle work for you?
Absolutely no water with OPENs when I’m outside. I even clean my brushes when I get home. For regular acrylics a spray bottle is a necessity to keep the palette moist. Other than that I don’t use much water.

And with regular acrylics I don’t consider keeping mixtures wet like oil painters do. I mix what I need for the note I’m about to apply and then I move on to the next mixture I need for the next note. If I need to revisit a passage I remix the color. I’m not trying to paint something really tight and flawless so any variation in the mixture is not only welcomed but I deliberately try to vary it. The layering ability of acrylics gives a wonderful pentimento effect that I love. My palette is thickly covered in small colorful circles of old mixtures dried one on top of another. I mix, apply, move on. If for whatever reason I need to match a color it isn’t very difficult to do since I can usually remember what I would’ve mixed for the original color.

I also like preserving left over oil paint in the freezer to prevent waste. How do you deal with acrylic paint waste? Stay wet palette?
For OPENs I just have them on a piece of plexi, that’s it. You can see it in a lot of my photos. It stays open long enough that I don’t waste much between painting sessions. I do use covered palettes for regular acrylics though. I don’t use the stay-wet sponge things or anything like that. Just a piece of plexi inside the box to mix on. I’ll spray it with water before I close it. The amount of paint I lose is pretty minimal. I don’t expect it to stay wet for weeks so I squeeze out what I expect to use. As they say, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs so I don’t worry about that too much. For soft body acrylics in the summer I sometimes use a 7-day pill holder. That works better than my original ice cube tray contraption. Zip-lock bags work great too if you have a small palette with wells.

Marcia Burtt has a lot of info on her web page. She uses a fishing tackle box with a gasket around the lid. I keep wanting to try that but I only use 7 colors so it seems like it may be too big for me.

Hope this helps.