I still remember how I curiously looked at the paintings in my grandfather’s corridor as a child. They were mostly landscapes by well-known artists, but the one painting stands out in my memory. The topic was a large Boabab tree. From a distance the painting contained different shadings of brown and grey, but with closer inspection it became evident that it was different types of blue and red that was mixed to create the final colours. As child I thought that the painter was sloppy in his paint mixing, but later realized that he was purposefully undermixing the paint to create some optical mixing effects. However, having said all of this, it was the texture of the painting that grabbed my attention. It was rough and it seemed like the painter almost carelessly applied big blotches of paint to the canvas. As I grew up I came to realise that the painting was performed with a palette knife and that the specimen that I inspected was an exceptionally well-painted one.
Since I started to paint, this painting of the Boabab have been haunting me and I have often wondered whether I will have the skills to paint with a palette knife. A while back I decided to give it a try. It was very late one Saturday night when I pulled out my acrylic paint and some heavy-weight paper to give it a try. The result is presented below. This technique uses a lot of paint and is very similar to the wet-in-wet technique of oil painting. But I enjoyed it and answered the lingering question…. “yes, I can do it!” It is not my best work, but I really enjoyed it and I will definitely apply this technique again sometime to some of my landscape paintings.
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