Pallet Knife Painting
I love the Golden OPEN acrylic paints with their slow and controllable drying time. This allows me pursue representational painting using techniques similar to those of oil painters and achieving similar results. The fast drying time of standard acrylics was always a problem for me as a representational painter, interested in blending and wet in wet techniques, and as an occasional plein air painter, where the warmth and wind of the outdoors would acerbate the fast drying properties of the old style acrylics.
I was thrilled when Golden came out with the OPEN paints with their slower and controlled drying times, and my enthusiasm has never lessened. I have been taking wonderful oil painting classes With Scott Nickerson at Colorest in Red Bank, New Jersey. With Scott's help I have always been able to use similar techniques to the oil painters and achieve similar results.
However, I never used oil paints themselves. Finally I had the opportunity to take a two day workshop to actually use oil paints and try them for myself. The workshop was given for Gamblling Paints by Anna Fox Ryan at Colorest in Red Bank, New Jersey. This was great because now I understand, through first hand experience, the properties of oil paint and the various mediums and techniques that I am emulating with OPEN acrylics.
Under the Pallet Layout Button, I have described how I have arranged the new Golden modern paint set into a standard pallet set up, similar to what was used during the oil painting workshop. I keep the pallet in an airtight container between sessions. Since the Golden OPEN acrylics are slow drying, I can use the same paint and pallet for weeks while working on the same painting. I have numerous containers, and dedicate one container to each of the paintings that I am simultaneously working on. By doing this, I always have the color pools for that specific paints available as the work evolves.
It was now time to put other learnings from the oil class to use. I learned that with oils, you can control the drying time by choosing the appropriate medium. I also enjoyed the various techniques of painting with a pallet knife with the oils. I decided to translate this to my paints, as i really enjoy knife painting.
Golden OPEN acrylic paints dry VERY slowly in a thick application, which is why they stay workable on the pallet for a long time. In a thin application they will dry relatively fast to be painted over gently, but can also be reworked if brushed into for a number of hours.
The slow drying time of a thick application of OPEN paint makes heavy impasto with a pallet knife difficult in that it will be so slow drying. The approach that i am exploring for flexible knife painting is to control the drying time of my thicker mixtures so that they will dry in a similar period of time to my thinner applications of OPEN paints. In this way, I can work either thick or thin. The way I am doing this to support a thick pallet knife application, is to mix my paint to be thickly applied with a pallet knife with the appropriate mixtures of mediums.
To do this I have experimented with mixing Golden OPEN mediums (both fluid and gel), which are slow drying, with regular Golden mediums (both fluid and gels), which are fast drying. Depending on the mixture of the two I can control the drying time of the medium mixtures. You can see some of my test mixtures on the following panel.
I was thrilled when Golden came out with the OPEN paints with their slower and controlled drying times, and my enthusiasm has never lessened. I have been taking wonderful oil painting classes With Scott Nickerson at Colorest in Red Bank, New Jersey. With Scott's help I have always been able to use similar techniques to the oil painters and achieve similar results.
However, I never used oil paints themselves. Finally I had the opportunity to take a two day workshop to actually use oil paints and try them for myself. The workshop was given for Gamblling Paints by Anna Fox Ryan at Colorest in Red Bank, New Jersey. This was great because now I understand, through first hand experience, the properties of oil paint and the various mediums and techniques that I am emulating with OPEN acrylics.
Under the Pallet Layout Button, I have described how I have arranged the new Golden modern paint set into a standard pallet set up, similar to what was used during the oil painting workshop. I keep the pallet in an airtight container between sessions. Since the Golden OPEN acrylics are slow drying, I can use the same paint and pallet for weeks while working on the same painting. I have numerous containers, and dedicate one container to each of the paintings that I am simultaneously working on. By doing this, I always have the color pools for that specific paints available as the work evolves.
It was now time to put other learnings from the oil class to use. I learned that with oils, you can control the drying time by choosing the appropriate medium. I also enjoyed the various techniques of painting with a pallet knife with the oils. I decided to translate this to my paints, as i really enjoy knife painting.
Golden OPEN acrylic paints dry VERY slowly in a thick application, which is why they stay workable on the pallet for a long time. In a thin application they will dry relatively fast to be painted over gently, but can also be reworked if brushed into for a number of hours.
The slow drying time of a thick application of OPEN paint makes heavy impasto with a pallet knife difficult in that it will be so slow drying. The approach that i am exploring for flexible knife painting is to control the drying time of my thicker mixtures so that they will dry in a similar period of time to my thinner applications of OPEN paints. In this way, I can work either thick or thin. The way I am doing this to support a thick pallet knife application, is to mix my paint to be thickly applied with a pallet knife with the appropriate mixtures of mediums.
To do this I have experimented with mixing Golden OPEN mediums (both fluid and gel), which are slow drying, with regular Golden mediums (both fluid and gels), which are fast drying. Depending on the mixture of the two I can control the drying time of the medium mixtures. You can see some of my test mixtures on the following panel.
Once I established the proportions of the medium mixture that would give my pallet knife work a drying time similar to that of my normal application of paint, I place an appropriately mixed pile of medium on my pallet. If kept in the air tight container, the medium pile stays workable just like the other paints. When I want to use the pallet knife, I take some of the medium mixture with the knife and mix it with the paint and apply it to my painting with the knife. So far this is working out quite well and I can achieve oil like effects!
My first pallet knife painting using this technique, River's Bend, described in my 4/3/12 and 4/9/12 Blog Posts, along with the pallet used to develop it, is depicted below. Note the pile of premixed heavy body mediums is the white pile in the upper right hand corner of pallet.
My first pallet knife painting using this technique, River's Bend, described in my 4/3/12 and 4/9/12 Blog Posts, along with the pallet used to develop it, is depicted below. Note the pile of premixed heavy body mediums is the white pile in the upper right hand corner of pallet.
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Copyright @ 2011, Joe Bergholm, All rights reserved.
