Palette knife painting lends an intuitive freshness to your oil paintings. Adding the loose and opposing mark-making of a brush will add a new texture to your paintings. Each form of mark making complements the other. In this workshop students will learn to enhance their own painting style, whether impressionist, expressionist, abstract, or realist, by using both palette knife and brush. Using a palette knife is a great way to build up thick texture and create broken color effects, while the brush will help you work on lost and found edges.

You will learn to make bold strokes with the palette knife, to use the edge of the knife to create sharp lines, and to use a variety of knife blade shapes. This can be complemented by the soft edges and hidden and lost lines created with a variety of brush sizes. You will learn how to paint on top of wet layers without lifting the paint below. You will be encouraged you to make multicolored palette knife strokes by loading multiple colors on your knife and without over blending with your brush.

This workshop will cover techniques of knife painting using knives of different sizes and shapes, as well as brush painting using your favorite brushes, and how to incorporate a brush to express the various elements of land and seascapes: including sky, clouds, water, rocks and grass, and how to paint lines for fences, tree branches and sharp edges.

Students can feel free to work from the demo image or to bring their own photo references.

Materials will include your favorite paints and painting surface, 3 flexible painting knives of different sizes (including larger sizes), and a mixing knife. Your favorite brushes of various sizes, large brushes are recommended; Bring a few inexpensive chip brushes from the hardware store. Bring as large a mixing palette as possible, and try to avoid a paper palette or a palette with edges if possible.