"Brushes? We Don't Need No Stinking Brushes!"

Plein Air Painting with Knives

Whenever I get feeling a little too precious or careful about my work, I have found it a real joy to leave the brushes at home and paint only with knives. The benefits of this approach open up with the first stroke of paint. Suddenly all the familiar old tricks fall away and I am left to try and make new kinds of marks which are more like plastering and troweling than drawing and painting. This is immense fun and can lead to some wonderful new expressive possibilities!

Above is my pochade set-up showing an assortment of knives and my composition roughly indicated.

Blocking-in goes very fast and uses lots of paint. Be sure to bring extra along. Without brushes there is no possibility of laying in a thin underpainting first. My method is to scrape or plaster my local mass tones in first, and then lay half-tones and color changes on top wet over wet, using different knife shapes to create texture and form.