Palette Knife Painting

Information
“ Give the free painting process space and allow yourself to be led by feeling and intuition”

Palette Knife Painting with Acrylics is an ideal course for beginner and intermediate students who want to improve their painting skills and learn a step-by-step process to explore the palette knife painting technique. The class meets once a week for four consecutive weeks.

Through individual instruction, demonstrations, and exercises, students will complete two or three paintings: one following a visual reference and two working on their own projects.

Classes will cover preliminary drawing, color combination, paint application, light, tones, values, form, texture, composition, blending, and the application of paint with a palette knife.

In the first two classes, students will learn, practice, and get familiar with the palette knife technique. They will start the first painting following a visual reference image.

In the last two classes students will practice working with the palette knife technique in an individual project, using their own images/ sketches or by memory if they prefer.

Class 1 and 2:
● Palette knife paintings samples images in art history.
● Color Theory and practice and palette setup.
● Starting a painting using palette knife technique
● Color application and comparison.
● Creating a variety of different kind of textures
● Learning stunning effects which are not possible to make with a brush.
● How to use the edge of the palette knife to create sharp lines.
● Painting on top of wet layers without having to worry about the paint blending
● Sense of unity and balance of the composition and final details.
● Completion of the painting.

Class 3 and 4:
● Working in their own project
● Blending edges by dragging one color into another.
● Combining bold palette knife’s strokes with delicate strokes created by the brush.
● Scraping details into the painting.
● Multi-colored palette knife strokes
● Scumbling over an underpainting.
● Dabbing small bursts of color
● Sense of unity and balance of the composition and final details.
● Completion of the painting.

Evaluation
Pablo will evaluate each student’s work while they are painting. At the end of class, he will provide a final critique to raise awareness of all learned techniques and approaches, proper execution, and areas to improve and modify to improve each painting.

About the Instructor:
Pablo Contrisciani earned his Masters in Fine Arts, Painting at Facultad de Bellas Artes, National University of La Plata, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has participated in several solo and group exhibitions locally, nationally and internationally. His work forms part of public and corporate collections from USA, Latin America and Europe. Pablo is an Oolite Arts alumnus (1998-2006 and 2010-2015) and works as a painting instructor since 1998.