These painting images are about 1:1, they were photographed in the morning light because it's whitest.
My 5" x 3/4" spreading blade was out for the picture. It's for applying gesso and making paint.
This was painted with a standard blade, a little larger, but not much, my #9 is a Grumbacher Style 877, size 18. The end is about a 1/4 inch diameter round and 3 inches long. A smaller blade would have a 1/8 " diameter half circle at the tip, like my #8 or my unbroken #4 used to have. If you hold the painting in your hand, it's easier to get the blade in the right position to apply paint. Spreading the paint is a skill that you will be in control of in a short time. It's nice to have a long, skinny, parallel
edged blade too like my # 5. Pre-mixing colors is important for a knife painter. Start with enough white squeezed out to cover the whole painting support. Divide the white paint up into the amount of colors you will pre-mix plus their tints. It is very important to use
the real color wheel when mixing colors. The Red-Yellow-Blue color wheel will
not work because the primary colors are wrong. The RGB/YMC won't
work either, it makes it's darker values incorrectly by using black pigment
to match subtracting light.
Look at the darkest darks in this painting. They are the combination of Transparent Magenta and Transparent Green. The pink sunlit area to the end of land is tints of the Orange and Cobalt Blue opposition. Paint with oppositions.7.5x5.5, oil, #892, 4-29-03
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