The Base
I used my scroll saw to cut the palette from a piece of mahogany, then sanded, stained, and urethaned it. I made separate fiberglas cloth lumps to use for each of the paint clumps, attached them with more fiberglas resin to the palette, then painted and sealed each of them. I painted to base to look a little like (I hoped) Florentine cobblestones, c. 1500.
Then glued it all together. Before I placed the paint spots I needed to work out where the dog's feet would fall.