Sunday, March 10, 2013

Palette Knife Adventure


Clydesdale Foal
Oil Paint on Panel
6" x 6"

Today was a day of firsts.  This is my first completed oil painting... and my first completed palette knife painting.  I used no brushes when creating this.  This cute little Clydesdale foal was just begging to be painted.  It is painted on 6"x6" panel so it's pretty small.  Probably took me around 3 hours because I didn't really know how to control the knife or paint yet.  I enjoyed the process though and will hopefully continue to make small palette knife paintings like this one. 

I'm not used to paint not drying very quickly so I've never been very careful around my paintings.  Well unfortunately that resulted in me dropping my phone right in the middle of it.  So after all the cursing, crying, and cleaning a phone with mineral spirits, I had to repaint a good chunk of the face. 

I tried to get the colors as exact as possible, but this still looks darker on the left-hand side than it is in person.  I keep thinking that one day I'll be better at photographing my art, but it hasn't happened yet. 

4 comments:

  1. Nice effort Megan especially since it's a small painting. Try a 12 x 12 you'll have an easier time with it. A 6 x 6 is really small to work on. I do 8 x 8 and some 6 x 6 but lately 8 x 8 much easier to control and have a little bit of fun. The bigger the more fun though :) You can try some mediums that make the drying time a little quicker if that helps.

    ~Randall

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    1. Thank you Randall! I'm always so intimidated by the larger canvas sizes and tend to stick to my comfort zone of around 6x6 (and sometimes smaller), but I can certainly see how a bigger size would make knife painting much easier and more freeing. Thank you for the suggestion. I've seen several different types of medium, but I wasn't sure how they would work with a knife painting. I didn't want to make the paint runny or anything so it wouldn't stand up like I was after. I think I really just need to work harder at being careful around my paintings hah!

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  2. This just beautiful! Hoping to lots more knife paintings from you!

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    1. Thank you so much! I really enjoyed the process so there will definitely be more palette knife paintings to come.

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