Paint with Knives!

This sounds funny but it is amusing indeed! It’s lot of fun painting with knives. These knives come in many shapes and sizes. Usually they are used to mix paint uniformly on the palette before taking with brush to paint on the canvas. Palette is the surface on which the paint is mixed. These are special blunt knives called ‘palette knives’. This knife has a wooden handle with flexible steel blade. It is extremely useful tool to mix the paint uniformly. It is also common practice to apply little amount of paint on the canvas to test the color mix before spreading with brush. This might have inspired the process of painting with knife in olden days. Sufficiently large crank between the handle and the blade keeps the artist’s hand away from the painting surface. They come in varieties of shapes and sizes that enable the artist to choose for the right purpose.

 

Things that need to be remembered while using knife for painting are,

• As the knife holds larger amount of paint as against the brush, it should be applied carefully, else it covers unwanted regions.

• Control with the knife needs some practice but is not difficult.

• Knife gives the advantage of textures while painting and can be utilized judiciously.

• Care needs to be taken to avoid damage to the canvas.

• Loading of paint needs little bit of practice. Once the paint is mixed it is loaded on the edges. This helps to scrape the canvas applying the paint.

Knives are extremely useful in painting mountains, tree trunks, rugged roads, rocks etc. They may be applied in layers with each layer being looser than the earlier to exaggerate the texture and highlights. Knives are also used in “Impasto” style of painting where paint is laid thickly. Some of the popular knife painters are Bob Ross, Titian, Monet, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh etc. Some of my efforts with knife are here below. Hope you enjoyed playing with knives!