Knife Painting Workshop

Knife Workshop WIP

(acrylic on watercolour paper)

This is the result of an interesting workshop this afternoon, led by my old friend Tony Montague. Using one of Tony's own photographs of a garden whose name I've forgotten, this was done with heavy body acrylics and a couple of painting knives. No brush, other than to lay in some base colours on the 140 lb watercolour paper, and me very much out of my comfort zone.

It took me until the coffee break, when I stepped away, to recognise the better aspects of this painting, and I was very grateful for Tony's later offer of a pot of fluorescent orange that helped make it sing a bit.

This was my first use of heavy body acrylics and I was surprised to find that parts of the painting were still wet when it was time to take it home. All my recent experience of acrylic painting has been with standard, flow formula and fluid acrylic, all of which dry frighteningly fast.

I quite like this painting, but it needs cropping and I'm already thinking about how it might be improved with a brush and some other colours.