Ballerina in Black

As a follow up to my last blog, I finished up one of the two ballerinas I was working on!  The grand plan was to create one ballerina in white and one in black, so I started on the ballerina in black and had a fabulous time with her.  While I did a hybrid of brush and palette knife with my last ballerina, I decided this time to attempt this one completely using palette knife.

For those of you unfamiliar with palette knife, it is the metal tool all the way on the right in the picture above.  Whereas brushes are made of bristles and create smoother, flatter texture generally, palette knife is made of metal (and sometimes plastic), and is sans bristles.  It allows you to scoop up more paint off of your palette and generally results in looser, more expressive strokes on the canvas and creates a lot of texture.  The only downside is that the paintings stay wet for a long, long time.  When I finish a painting with a brush, I avoid touching it for a couple weeks but I don't worry about it too much.  That said, with palette knife, it's critical to move the painting to a place where nobody will encounter it or touch it for quite some time!

Ballerina in Black is a 24"x36" oil on linen.  What do you think of the palette knife technique?!  Let me know! I'd love to hear from you.

Hope you enjoy and are having a very happy Monday so far!