Favorite Tools: Paint Scraper
One of my favorite tools of all time.
OK, this is a little insight into the mysterious world of fine art painting – haha!. This is one of my favorite tools. It is a paint scraper. A two buck tool that makes cleaning my palette a joy.
Let me explain.
I am a fanatic about keeping my brushes and palette clean. I believe that I cannot mix colors properly and predictably if there is a mess of colors smeared all over my palette. So I clean my palette several times during a painting session. I use a glass palette which is a piece of 1/4 inch glass I had cut to fit the top of a microwave oven cart. I have a piece of neutral gray paper under it to give me a nice, middle-tone gray to mix my colors against. The reason for a glass palette is to make it easy to clean. I used to use a palette knife to scrape the paint off the palette but it left a residue and some streaks of paint that I would wipe off with a paper towel. Not a big deal but I always felt there would a better way somewhere.
So about a year ago I bought a DVD from Richard Schmid on painting landscapes. He is also a clean freak with a glass palette. In the DVD he nonchalantly scrapes the paint off his palette with a cheap, hardware store, paint scraper. It was beautiful. The obvious simplicity of using that tool was a revelation. Okay, I must be a little slow not to think of it myself. I can take the humiliation. It is a small price for a cool idea.
The one in this picture needs a serious blade replacement.
Any artists have odd favorite tools?
This post is from Michael Lynn Adams blog. (with permission to repost)
http://michaellynnadams.com/
