How to paint permanent pictures

Chapter 7: PALETTE KNIVES

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About This Book

The work presents practical guidance for artists on selecting and using pigments, vehicles, supports, and varnishes to produce durable paintings. It explains simple and complex palettes, permanent foundations, preparation of wood and metal supports, and the properties of oils, tempera, watercolors, waxes and mediums. The author discusses common causes of deterioration—fading, darkening, cracking, peeling—and prescribes materials and techniques to prevent them, including labeling and sequence of application. Chapters cover specific problem pigments to avoid, varnishes and blooms, repainting, restoration and cleaning, and framing. Advice is technical but conveyed in plain language to help painters and collectors produce and preserve long-lasting work.

PALETTE KNIVES

PAINTERS should adopt horn palette knives instead of steel palette knives. To illustrate the reason for this—if Naples Yellow be taken and smoothed out with a steel knife, the Naples Yellow turns Brown and Black in streaks, because there is a chemical action between the steel and the chemical composition of the Naples Yellow. This is true of many colors; and where painters are inclined to do some painting with knives instead of brushes, it is preferable to use a horn or hard rubber knife, because no decomposition can possibly take place.