Insights
Brushwork and Edges
by Alana Knuff | February 17. 2026 | Edges
Brushes and palette knives are painting tools. Brushes apply light to heavy paint and palette knives render thick impasto application. To emphasize objects in the foreground, thick intense hues are appropriate. To emphasize objects far away, thin muted colors work best. The variety adds depth and interest to paintings.
A painting that has all hard edges appears is like a photograph. Value painters use all soft/lost edges. My preference is a combination of soft and hard edges with the hard edges near the point of interest. An exception to this occurs with portraits. In portraits the eyes are the focal point, and soft edges are a must in rendering eyes.
Harmony and Color Dispersion
There seems to me no greater challenge to a painter that brining together a clear balance of color dispersion and harmony. What do I mean? After one plans the color palette and executes the composition, what remains is the ‘icing on the cake. How do you disperse color throughout the painting to give it visual unity? I find this to be the greatest challenge and am still working on it. Needless to say, as you paint dabbing a bit of what is left on your brush in correct and multiple value blocks livens the visual experience. It is like pixels of every color you used dispersed throughout the painting. Easier said than done.
Light fades into shadows and therefore is relevant!
Light is that energy that shapes the forms and its absence creates the shadows. It is what draws us into a painting. The contrast of the adjacent darkest and lightest values, known as chiaroscuro, is easy to paint for most artists. More difficult is the middle range – those values that transition the light into the shadows crossing a wide range of cool and warm hues. There appear to be infinite possibilities, yet as artists we choose to minimize the visual transition for the viewer. Mastering the art of this transition may take a lifetime. It is the most important aspect of painting. It is the ‘holy grail’ of artistic endeavors.
Green – Mixing Greens
My least favorite color is green. It seems to take over paintings if too saturated. Reality, especially landscapes, displays many variations of green. And it is important to note that green makes water wet in a painting. Combining various blues (cobalt, ultramarine, cerulean, phthalo, Prussian) with various yellows (cadmium, cadmium lemon, Indian, Hansa, ochre, Naples) produces a wide spectrum of green favoring either warm or cool depending on the ratio mix. Seldom do I use a green from a tube, except for chromium oxide green.
For Whom do You Paint?
When you wonder if your style has gone out of style, doubts stir and you question why and for whom you paint. To paint is not an option; it is an obsession – passion. Artists desire to express inner feelings about the world and what we see. Painting, therefore, is never a chore until we allow marketing to interfere with what we paint. Galleries may agree to represent work if only one paints ‘this’ and not ‘that.’ Though this improves their sales, it robs from ours creative bottom line. And so we see in far too many galleries production paintings of the same subject/composition tweaked in multiple manors to satisfy marketing.
Shipping Your Artwork
This past year several of my paintings have been shipped to various locations. Lessons learned in this regard are many. Carefully packaging the painting for shipping is very important. A strong commercial box intended for shipping art such as “Air Float” is expensive but well worth the cost, especially if the painting has many stops. Museums expect this type of protection. For a single run, prepare a box using heavy duty cardboard with two inch thick building Styrofoam insulation around all sides of the painting and frame. The Styrofoam is light reducing costs and is resistant to punctures that may go through the cardboard. The painting should be wrapped in brown paper and never in bubble wrap or plastic. These melt under high heat and may stick to the painting damaging the surface.
Painting Inspiration
There will be highs and lows in which one feels and doesn’t feel inspired to paint. During the ‘dry spells’ the creative energy is not dormant, but rather changing perspective. That which was learned previously is being enriched. Keep painting in your mind seeing new works unfold. Keep painting.
En Plein Air
The term, en plein air, originated with the French Impressionists. It refers to painting outdoors and capturing the colors of the daylight. Though most of my work is done in the studio, the subject and composition are captured from life; painting a small plein air piece, painting a model study and/or photographing my experience. There really is no substitute for painting from life. A visual memory of the first-hand experience is one of the tools we rely on while painting.
Oil Paint Hues
Often artists will ask what oils I use. And the answer is different manufacturers. The manufacturer that has the hue I like and puts little else besides pigment and oil in the paint, usually is the one selected. For example yellow ochre varies considerably among oil paint makers. The same is true of Naples Yellow. A good way to consistently get the hue you desire is to know the pigment code. Here is a good reference. http://www.artiscreation.com/ColorCharts.html
Reusing Canvases
We likely agree that not all of our paintings turn out as planned. And some artwork just doesn’t seem to sell; perhaps it lacks that emotional connection needed by the viewer. If the canvas is of good quality, it makes sense to reuse it. The first step is to lightly sand the surface with a fine grain sandpaper taking out oil ridges where paint is thick and leaving a fairly smooth surface. Dust with a micro cloth. It you are comfortable with the results, apply two coats of oil gesso. Allow each application to dry and then lightly sand the surface before adding the next application.
What went wrong? Perhaps the answer is here.
Not every work of art we do meets our expectations. The image in our head sometimes doesn’t materialize. So, a ‘what went wrong’ analysis is needed. Here are some questions to ask.
- Is the drawing correct?
- Is there a good composition?
- Are the hues clear?
- Is there a dominate color with harmonizing colors?
- Are warm and cool contrasts used correctly?
- Are the values and their forms consistently correct?
- Is the light source evident and consistent?
- Is their variety in the brushwork?
- AND is there emotion reflected in the work?