Trees with a Painting Knife

Tree Paintings

Notes From my Tree Journal

Saturday I taught a knife painting workshop in my Loft Studio. Naturally I used trees as my subject for the above demo painting. I don't often paint with only the knife. To me the best paintings use both brush and knife, but I needed to do it all with my knives to show my class you actually can do a painting from start to finish with them. Unlike most painting knife painters, I don't like thick paint. I usually scrape the paint quite thinly over the surface of the support, in multiple layers. Acrylics are an excellent medium for painting knife because they are clean and crisp; drying very quickly to paint multiple layers. My two favorite paintings knives are the long narrow oval and the slanted chisel edged knife.