Did you know that although palette knives were used for centuries to mix paint it’s thought that it wasn’t until Rembrandt that artists actually thought to use them to apply the paint to the canvas? I suppose until then painters required the greater control that a paintbrush could give them, and the rough, scratchy marks a palette knife could give were not so interesting. More fool them I say because palette knives are amazing painting tools, as we demonstrated this week!
Palette knives can be used in so many different ways – including on their side, out flat to spread out the paint, with several different colours on, nice thick impasto layers, or even on its side but spreading out enabling an entirely straight contour to appear (very useful for buildings). And that’s even before thinking about the many different shapes and sizes of palette knife. The trick though is not to think of them like a paintbrush, but to embrace the lack of control and the amazing effects they, and they alone, can give you.
