Exercise 1 – Impasto
The brief
Impasto effects can be achieved with both oils and acrylic paints. Acrylic paints can be
given more volume with the addition of gels designed to create impasto effects. The gel
should be mixed with a palette knife and then applied with a brush or other painting
implement. Gels appear white but when they dry they are transparent. If you want greater
opacity add more opaque pigment to the mix.
Work on prepared surfaces to produce several experimental paintings in which you try out
the following effects:
• Using a brush
Paint a simple still life with fruit. Arrange three or four pieces of fruit in front of you and
decide on the main colours you will need. Set out a range of colours on your palette
and a thickening gel if necessary. Without mixing colours together, load your brush heavily
and deposit thick smears of paint roughly in the shape of the areas of colour before you.
Now roughly blend colours with your brush on the canvas. Work quickly and don’t be
tempted to get involved with careful blending. Allow the textures of your rough brush
strokes to sit on the surface and the multi-coloured streaks of paint to remain unmixed.
• Using a painting knife
Broad areas of paint can be applied with a painting knife or you can create sculpted
effects with the blade of the knife. Knives come in several shapes (pear, trowel or
diamond shapes, for example), and they can be used differently for different effects. You
could use stiff card or a kitchen knife to apply paint in broad, bold swathes. Apply some
broad areas of colours using a rough scraping motion. Leave some areas of paint fat and
then work with the point or side of a knife to create textured effects in
other areas of colour.
• Scratching
Apply two or three colours thickly with a knife or piece of card, allowing some areas of
colour to overlap. While the paint is still wet, draw into this using a stick, the end of a
brush handle or a pencil. Allow your drawing implement to drag colours into each other.
A technique for scratching into wet paint that can be used with great precision for
particular effects is called sgraffto. Find out what you can about this effect which was
used by the old masters as well as by contemporary artists.
Keep experimenting with different effects using any tools that you can think of to sculpt the
paint. Make notes about any special effects that you think are striking or that you would
like to repeat. How could these techniques have enhanced some of the work that you’ve
produced in earlier parts of the course?
The process and fnished studies
Warming up
Before starting with the exercises I wanted to try and loosen up a bit and with some left
over acrylic paint from other work I used a palette knife to apply the paint in an
unpremeditated way on 38x30cm cartridge paper. I did not add impasto gel for this frst go.
Without initially thinking about what was happening on the paper, it emerged that I was
creating some form of foreground landscape, distant hills and what I can only describe as
one of the mysterious and troubling 'black dogs' fying across the sky – a bit scary, but it
used up excess paint, got me used to handling a palette knife again and let me try out
approaching a piece of work without any real forethought of what the outcome might be:
Using a brush
A basic selection for a still life of an orange, apple and two strawberries. For this I chose a
selection of acrylics: scarlet; vermillion; orange; lemon yellow; sap green and titanium
white straight out of the tube, on a pre-prepared background of various blue mixes (from
previous left-over paint from previous exercises) on a 50x40cm canvas board.
I used three brushes: a Daler & Rowney 'Graduate' size 18 bright; a Winsor Gold size 8
fne hog flbert; and a SAA size 6 fat.
I also used Daler & Rowney matt impasto gel as a thickening agent with the paint. I tried
my best to follow the brief, but found it quite diffcult to not blend paint, although I think I
avoided 'too careful blending of paint'?
Using a painting knife
This I enjoyed, using the same composition and palette on the same sized canvas board
(with a lighter blue acrylic mix). I used 3 palette knives to work the impasto paint (scarlet;
vermillion; orange; lemon yellow; sap green and titanium white) onto the canvas board,
again attempting to capture the brief:
Scratching
Looking at 'graffto' or 'sgraffto' it seems that its origins rest in a method of sculptural
decoration on the facades of stuccoed buildings in Renaissance Italy:
“The process consisted of laying a coat of pigmented plaster over a coat of another color
and, before it had dried, incising the design through to the undercoat.”
[source: Mayer, R. (1991) The artist's handbook of materials & techniques. 5th ed. London:
Faber & Faber, p.379].
In terms of painting, sgraffto “... is a techniques where the artist scratches into the top
layer of the paint to reveal areas of the surface underneath.”
[source: http://www.artistterms.com/sgraffto.htm Accessed: 4 October 2014].
I chose to stick with the fruit still life theme and used three acrylic colours: ultramarine,
rose and lemon yellow. As well as mixing with impasto paste I also added some retarder to
the mix to lengthen drying time. Again using a pre-prepared 50x40cm canvas board I used
the following tools for application of the paint:
[Cardboard, hardboard, palette knife & metal scribe]
While I enjoyed the kind of anarchy of scratching away paint, my preference of the three
techniques lies with palette knife application.
Stuart Brownlee – 512319
4 October 2014