Painting with a palette knife.

Painting with a palette knife can be great fun. With it,  you can achieve a variety of bold textures you simply cannot get with a brush. Colours are mixed on the canvas and the resulting, often unexpected combinations, can surprise, and excite and be used to great advantage.
Paint is used straight from the tube and to increase volume one can also add things like Winsor & newton's Oleopasto or Rowney's texture paste.


To demonstrate some of the effects that can be achieved, I show a painting I did earlier this year.  "Colin's shed" . It is a large work measuring 48" x 36" done on MDF board.

 

In the above, you can see the rich textures and ridges  created with a large trowel -like palette knife. Titanium white, Cobalt blue, pthalo blue and  Old Holland violet grey were all mixed and scraped around on the panel.

Another section of the painting began in an even bolder way. Scratching  into the paint, scraping bits off, sanding it down.

 

And again

 Doesn't look like much at the moment.

Let me show you a larger section of the painting.

Or this

At this stage I had to decide whether to simply use a palette knife or to combine it with brushwork and a more traditional approach.  I decided to do the latter, but still retain many sections which were looser and more spontaneous.

And so to the finished painting.

The first image above is of a section of  the roughly textured , plastered wall. The second is of the pile of logs by the stove.

The third, is the underpainting for the pile of assorted bric a brac on the workbench.

Sections of the painting in closer detail.

Or

As you can see, "Colin's Shed" is an almost magical place. Within it is an array of memorabilia, clutter and in some places downright junk. But it is a warm and inviting retreat, a place where one can feast one's eyes and take journeys into the imagination.

Painting a landscape in gouache 2

I now focus on the middle ground and distant hills. The hills have to be sufficiently greyed to push them back but at the same time there has to be a suggestion of the pattern of heather on them. I use a hog’s hair brush with solid pigment. Dragging this over the texture of the watercolour board breaks the colour up and softens it

Close attention is now paid to the middle distance. I compare the tonal and colour differences with the landscape beyond and begin adding some suggested detail of trees , gorse, and river. I paint the river in the foreground looking at how the sky is reflected in it. This necessitates painting over the foreground trees which I had initially blocked. Being gouache, this is easily done. These will be reinstated at a later stage.
I am still using fairly large brushes, building up texture, and painting loosely. The beauty of gouache is that it dries instantly, yet is opaque and remains water soluble. Alterations and additions are easy to make as will be seen in the next stage.

A traditional method of painting a portrait 3

The monochromatic underpainting being completed, I now start to apply colour. Initially, this is done with a series of glazes, transparent washes of colour laid over and modifying the cool tones already established.

For this I use a mixture of Dammar varnish, stand oil and turpentine.
The colour of the shirt is quickly blocked in also.
The next stage is to build up the texture of the skin with more solid pigment and impasto.

Painting a landscape in acrylics - part 2

At this stage of the painting, I am blocking in some of the darker tones, and beginning to construct the various buildings. I am using stiffer pigment and building up the texture of the painting. I do this in different ways. I may stipple with a stiff hogs hair brush or sponge, use a palette knife, or print materials down. There are lots of different mediums that can also assist in this process.
e.g. sand texture gel, glass beads texture gel, heavy structure gel.