The Self-Isolation Residency 12th April 2020: Day 14

Today I  have taken a short break from working on my self portrait, as it is still quite wet, and have returned to working from some my landscapes studies. I've used this as an opportunity to explore some of my mark making techniques. The self portrait is being painted entirely with brush and the 'qualities' that those brush marks bring to the painting are really so important, as demonstrated by yesterdays details. With this in mind  I decided to approach today's landscapes entirely with the knife to give myself a comparative series of marks  to study.

Personally I have no preference between working with the brush or working with the knife, on the whole it often comes down to the way in which I am feeling as to which one I select to use. Funnily enough when students arer first encourage to try using the knife they thing of it as a 'blunt instrument', something entirely inappropriate to painting with. And I won't deny that it can take a little time to get the hang of the knife, but once you do it becomes a real pleasure to use.  As with the brush an awful lot of knife technique comes down to confidence, you really have to understand the varying pressure of touch that is needed to apply a layer of paint, often to another still wet layer of paint, to achieve the desired effect.

Yesterdays details that I posted were all painted very freely, really just blobs of colour here and smudges of colour there. Layers were applied upon still wet layers, so although the paint was applied freely there is also a large amount of care, which really only comes from experience,  is needed to not smudge the layers below. This is a technique that I have come quite adept at with the knife so today I tried a direct comparison with the knife. Once again I worked from a black ground and 'spread' on large areas of flat colour with the edge of the knife to suggest the basic areas of the landscape; sky, mountains, water etc.  As with the self portrait the paint went of quite thickly and with a fair amount of texture all of which I wanted to retain and hopefully add to with the subsequent layers.
 This is the point that can seem nerve racking, I now have to have a very light hand to add extra oily layers and layers on top of this insecure foundation. Most of this is done with the flat of the knife, which in a way makes it harder as you really cant see the mark you are making properly at the knife blade blocks your view. All I can really say is that once again it takes practice to know much much, or more to the point how little pressure is needed to add the new paint without disturbing what is already down, the one tip I would have it that if you feel even the slightest resistance you're probably applying too much pressure. One these layers have been applied you have two more things to do, the first one is breathe, because you probably haven't been doing for the last few minutes! The second on is to use the knife in a totally different way, to use it to 'draw' or even 'carve' the final marks and details into the wet paint, this is possibly my favorite part of working with the knife as it combines all the aspects of art I love the most, drawing, painting and sculpting