Event

Painting with a Palette Knife

With Cynthia Rosen

April 6–7, 2024
10am–4pm

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Painting With A Palette Knife
w/Cynthia Rosen
April 6 & 7
This two-day workshop will focus on the use of the palette knife, the freedom it affords and the emphasis of color in your paintings. While the palette knife can be used to enhance brush paintings, it is a perfect tool for impressionistic as well as abstracted images rich in color.
On Day 1: What the palette knife offers.
On this morning, I will introduce the differences between brush painting and knife painting by executing 2 small paintings of the same subject with the different tools as I briefly review issues of composition, value, and color mixing.
We will then work from still life’s which will better enable me to understand how you approach your work and discover in what ways I can best assist you in color relationships, values, use of the knife, edges, etc.
On Day 2: Painting landscapes from photos
In this morning’s knife demo, I will discuss the drawbacks of working from photos and illustrate how to effectively free oneself from the restraints that photos can impose by moving objects as desired and pushing warm versus cool colors. I will show how the palette knife can add its own vibrancy to the image.
You are then free to continue with still life or work on landscapes or a still life from your own photos. In a 2-day workshop I will not have time to cover issues of perspective and light on buildings, so it is best to bring a more naturalistic scene.
Materials: Oil or acrylic paints – you may bring colors of your choosing, but I typically use:

• Prussian or thalo blue, ultramarine or cobalt blue, purple dioxozine, alizarin permanent, naphthol red, cad orange, hansa or cad yellow medium, lemon yellow, zinc white, titanium white or titanium zinc white.
• Palette – paper palettes work if you don’t have a pochade, another palette. I suggest the Masterson Sta-Wet palette for acrylic painters, a great investment
• Medium and Solvent as needed (oil or acrylic dependent. If you use acrylics, I suggest you bring retarder with you in addition to your medium.
• Container for your medium/solvents
• rags or paper towels -I use rags
• 16×20” panels or canvasses – 1 suggest having 3 depending on how quickly you work. If you prefer a different size, feel free to bring whatever you are comfortable with. I find while working larger takes more time, it allows for more freedom of movement with the knife. Feel free to bring more and/or a variety of sizes if you would like to. Exploration is always great.
• Landscape photos- preferably printed or on your iPad (please bring a few so we can determine together which will work best – I will have a few on hand). Please do not rely on a small cell phone screen for your image.
• Brush – definitely a large brush for staining your panel, other sizes as you wish.
• I recommend RGM palette knifes #46 and #50 or similar (bent neck, flexible narrow pointed triangular blade) nitrile or other gloves if you wish