Painting Knives

I believe I use painting knives 94.99% of the time. Why? Well simply because in 1996 my teacher, Ed Stitt, assigned students to do an all pallet knife painting exercise . It was during that exercise that I felt for the first time that I knew how to paint. I never went back to a brush except for the occasional study to keep my brush skills limber. Since then, on thinking back on why it felt so natural and familiar I realized that I was at home with the pallet knife because it was so like frosting a cake. As a child, I would always frost my mother's cakes and cup cakes.

The painting knife also suits my painting temperament. I like to think, mix a color and then just get the paint on there. It's a rhythm that feels right. It's direct and keeps the color clean. I don't have to stop to clean brushes or add medium. The instrument that you respond to will suit your characteristics too whether it be brush, knife or fingers.

Pallet knives are big and flat and usually have an elbow to keep your knuckles out of the paint when mixing and scraping paint. Painting knives also have elbows but they come in all sizes and shapes. They should be very flexible so that they can be used on both sides like buttering bread. That is not the way I use painting knives but that is the theory.

I use the edge and I use the back only on my painting knives. I own almost every size there is but there are four favorite sizes that I keep returning to depending on the size of the painting and the shape and area that needs to be laid in.

Painting knife strokes are like hand writing, they become yours, idiosyncratic and identifiable. In fact, when I have let other painters borrow my painting knives, I usually have to throw them when I get them back. Other painters always handle painting knives in a way that make it unusable for my idiosyncratic paint handling.There is no right way or wrong way to use a painting knife. There is only your way.

I love pallet knives because the color I want and mix stay clean and gets into the painting fast. Painting knives are easy to clean. Over the years I have developed techniques for blending colors and for "glazing' over colors without medium. As one brush painter said after watching me work with a painting knife :"There isn't anything that I can do with a brush that you can't do with a knife." ( But I didn't add..except for drawing.)