Painting with a knife

I ran across an article in International Artist magazine (June-July edition page 78) about painting with palette knives. I was intersted in the fact that the artist was doing landscapes using only a knife and they had an exciting look about them. I've played with knife painting from time to time ususally in abstract projects to develop texture in part of the painting. This artist was doing the entire painting with knives, never wetting a brush. The idea that I could do a painting without having to clean a brush appealled to my lazy nature. This old barn is my first attempt. It was fun and I enjoyed just wipping the knive with a paper towel each time I wanted to change colors. It didn't take long to discover there are all sorts of ways to load the paint on the knife and then to get the desired affect on the canvas. This painting is 12x24 and I used 3 knives (large medium and small).

Little Flower

I've been playing around with a smaller format. This one is 5"x7". The smaller size discourages details. I'm inclined to get all wound up in the details and lose the impact of the painting. I wouldn't enter this in an art show, but I've been surprised at how well it reads from across the room.

The Power of the Pencil

I haven't been blogging for the past couple of months. That's because I haven't been painting. I know from past experience that taking time off from painting occasionally will recharge my creative batteries. I got tied up on a long telephone conversation the other day. There was a copy of an art magazine on my desk. Out of boredom with the call I started doodling from the cover picture on the magazine. With nothing to work with but a yellow pencil (#2) I was forced to simplify. I made myself stop before it was "finished". It's 5" x 7".

An interesting exercise

This piece is 18x24 inches on suede matte board. I did it in my Thursday morning group. The still life set-up presented an interesting problem. The gourd is very close in value and color to the crock. This picture doesn't show it well but it turned out that the only way I could make the thing work was to warm up the gourd and cool down the crock. That provided a little separation.

The suede matte board is nicce to work on for quick studies because it really grabs the pastels. It's also very cheap. There's always some around a frame shop. It's the center that drops out when they cut a suede matte for a framing job. It comes in some very interesting colors. This one is a deep burgundy. It also comes in black ... in case you feel compelled to do an Elvis or a bull fighter.

An old barn

Why does everyone paint old barns? I discovered the reason on this piece ... they're fun to paint. You can mess up the perspective and put a sag in the roof and everything still looks OK. In figuritive work the slghtest error in drafting is immediately apparent.

I painted this in one session over several hours. It's oil on stretched canvase, mostly brush work with some knife work on the barn. I'm letting it rest for a couple of weeks before sign it. I may tweek it a little to emphasize the direction of the light.

An International diaster

I found this old truck abandoned in a field a few miles from here. It's an International from the early 60's. International was better known for making tractors but they made pick ups for a few years. I don't ever recall hearing a kind word about their trucks.

I did this piece on Art Spectrum Colourfix using Nupastels. I didn't use any soft pastels. As you can imagine, the grill was a pain to do.

Knife work

I'm back in my Thursday morning painting group. Last week I was chatting with the instructor about why and how people use palette knives in painting. In that group I work mostly in pastels because they are fast and direct. We do still lifes mostly where the challenge is drawing and developing the shadows with lost and found edges. I think lessons learned in pastel are applicable in other media. I was told that the advantage of painting with knives is that hard straight edges are easily done. I started playing with this abstract a day or two later. My problem with abstracts is knowing when I'm finished. Frankly, I'm not sure about this one ... but I am sure it was fun to do. If I had to name it I guess I would call it "No Boundaries" because each little shape crosses into it's neighbor. Maybe "Squatters" would be more appropriate. This one is 16 x 20 inches, oil on canvas.

Sometimes they just paint themselves

I did this yesterday in my Thursday group session. I used Nupastels on Colourfix paper. It is 11x14 inches. I chose this particular setup because I thought the brass plate behind a brass bowl would make an interesting challenge. As soon as I got the basic shapes blocked in and started applying local colors the piece just took over. On rare occassions you get one that just seems to paint itself. This is what it looked like after two and a half hours

Rosa Verde

I've been fooling around with this painting for a couple of weeks. You know the routine paint a while. Put it up. Hit it again in a day or two. Today I decided to finish it. After two or three hours with my nose about 2 inches from the surface I decided it was done. As those of you know who paint know, that's an arbitrary decision. I set up the trusty digital camera and shot it. The minute the image came up on my computer screen I spotted about 15 things that needed "adjusting". I printed out a picture of it on my printer. I marked up the picture with arrows pointing to all the "errors". Most of it will be easy to correct. I'll let it dry over night and then fine tune it tomorrow.

The painting is 16X20 inches. It's done with Shiva Paintstiks on a piece of Matte board. I'm pleased with the colors and the design. Most of the correction work will be with the shadow depth in the center of the rose. Incidentally, my photo reference was a bright red rose which I decided was boring.