Author: Steve Scott

I set myself a summer project when I was at college and, with the help of my mum, made a waistcoat that is still in use today. This year I decided to try it again.

So with the help of Sam Chandler and Julie Fish, I managed another one made out of beautiful materials.

I’ve always been lucky enough to be able to develop skills. Those skills have drawn other people’s attention which is a mood boost but which can also put you under pressure.

I’ve taken the privilege of that attention seriously and watched others to help develop those skills further. I’ve never taken things for granted. I try to push boundaries on my abilities and widen the range of messages I can include in work. I also love to try to pass skills on to others. I learn from that as well. So here are some examples of development that I hope will encourage you to keep going.

This was done in the mid 1960’s with gouache, which is not the easiest thing to paint with. I was a naive 15 year old with no experience of painting scenes, no real knowledge of art and I made the whole thing up without reference to any other images. Other people had more sophisticated painting and drawing skills than me but it wasn’t a bad painting. Apart from a Gandalf on someone’s window, I rarely painted people again until this next one.

This was started in the 20th Century and finished in the 21st. People like it, despite its slight naivety. I knew the place and used some photos to remember things like the bus. The scene arrangement is completely made up as I painted it. Because it is in acrylic I was able to paint over and improve it over time.

This is a real place again and a real event and photos were used as guides. The details of the scene itself and the figure placements are completely imagined. By this time I was starting to be more able to make decisions about tonal and colour balances and levels of detail required. Acrylic paint allowed me to develop the scene steadily, starting from overall colour and light ideas and developing and building up layers, even removing bits that don’t work.

This is just a sketch from a music festival. This one manages to capture a scene without getting too trapped in detail. Watercolour usually forces you to make compromises to capture a rapidly changing scene. Freedom of expression is sometime too easily forgotten. My growing skill with the medium has given me that freedom. By this time the work on the more formal scenes and constant practice on site have given me a more relaxed level of control. Whether you are working from a scene in front of you or one built up from one or more photographs, the aim is to get to a point where you are building a painting rather than copying what is front of you.

This a a more recent one and reflects some of my present day habits. I made a sketch on the spot and took some photographs. I made some mini sketches of what I wanted to include. The background cliffs are as near the original sketch as possible to capture the day and then the rest was added trying to capture the mood of the whole day, including packing up to go home. By the end of painting this I am no longer looking at other images, just at the painting and whether it is satisfying in itself. For complicated things like little figures I might try out brush sketches on a separate surface, like the paper covering my desk. This allows you to develop quicker and more effective brush strokes.

Those examples are all social scenes, which are particular difficult to capture. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with my first effort but I hope you can see that constant development allows me to have more choices and better control over what emerges. As the years have gone by I have managed to get less trapped in the picture or thought that I am working from and this allows me to have the creation of the new picture clearer in my mind. It allows me to stare at the picture and decide where it needs to improve and the best way to do it. Here is an example of a landscape. It is a second development from a sketch. The first development had a family group and a Highland cow on. I decided to do without the cow this time but quickly added the people in. Staring at it made me realise that they didn’t add anything worthwhile so I just painted them out.

Below is a painting from a completely different ‘theme’, one that probably suits my own thoughts and way of working more readily, but all the same I could not have achieved it without applying lessons learned from others and the experiment and development that went before it.

I hope you will keep going and find ways of working that suit you.

Since I started with Shelley Art Group I have tried to make a habit of writing up any learning sessions we do. I’ve just realised that an early one on with, Heather Burton, using these knives slipped out of my brain. As I now use these tools on most of my acrylic painting I thought I should correct that.

At the workshop I just felt out of control throughout but there was something about the freedom of it and the way it created interesting textures that made me persist. Here’s one I created just after the workshop:

I based it on a sketch I did some years ago and it was successful enough to hang in the farm and to encourage me onwards.

One of the other members at the workshop (Julie) persisted as well and I ended up buying a painting she made. Her descriptions of some of what she’d found added to my store of knowledge. I experimented a bit more and decided to go on a workshop at Heather’s house. Here’s what came out of that (with a lot of work afterwards too):

Hopefully you can see that the skills have come on somewhat. Here is a fragment of another.

That fragment shows the sort of textures, lively colouring and sense of life and movement the pallet knives can give you. You don’t have to use the knife for everything but it is a really useful tool. This post explains some of the techniques, hints and tips for success.

The first tip I picked up from Julie was to make sure you make a good base surface before you start. You can use a heavy paper or board or canvas but also make sure you give it a good gesso base coat as well.

Like me you may associate pallet knives with thick paint layers. You can try this but, like Heather, I recommend that you start with flat layers. If you leave raised or ridged areas it makes subsequent layers much harder to apply. You can layer paintings in a quite traditional way even with the knives.

Related to the thin layers is the fact that you can scrape paint off as well as put it on. If you make what you think is a mistake scrape it off. Don’t worry if it doesn’t all come off. You will have the most success if you embrace freedom and experiment. If you are used to very neat layers of paint you can let the paint dry and paint over but my next tip means that you don’t have to do that.

Instead of mixing exactly the colour you want and laying it on carefully on the canvas or as a thin semi transparent layer over another colour, you can part mix the colour on the pallet and then play with the mix on the painting. You can scrape areas out with the edge of the knife to create lines of colour variation. Look at the fragment and I think you see evidence of some of this.

Less a thicker bristle brush, the picture above show the tools on my desk from a painting I recently completed. The dip pen is for thin acrylic ink marks.You don’t have to stick to one tool. I might apply paint with a knife and then decide a bit more subtle merging is required and so. go over it with a dry brush. Or you can do it with a damp brush to get a smoother effect. Forget the rules and experiment. The pallet knife above is part of a cheap set. They need to be flexible. I have bought a couple of slightly more specialist ones but I don’t use them much. I have usd edges of card to make thinner marks too. Make sure you have old cloths at hand. One of the lovely advantages of pallet knives is that you can simply wipe them clean, though I usually see if any spare paint mix can be used elsewhere on the painting as well.

When applying the paint, pick some up with the knife and apply it to the surface edge first and then drag across, slowly flattening the knife to apply more paint as you go. Don’t worry too much about it. You can pick/scrape paint up if there is too much. Remember you want to leave a fairly flat surface at first so pick up ridges in particular unless they are an intended part of the final painting.

Look at the quarry in the Digley Airshow above. Heather suggested making the marks vertically and that has worked. Any texture in the paint aligns with the nature of the object you are creating and gives a more marked contrast to any marks in a different direction.

As Heather just replied to me, remember not to give up. As I wrote in another post, you have permission to play. Keep going and I think you will find a freedom and a range of techniques that work for you.

The full Wood of Cree painting using the illustrated tools:

That’s it for the moment. My ageing brain is shouting at me to stop. I’ll come back for more another time.