The Painter in Oil / A complete treatise on the principles and technique necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors

by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

The Scraper.

The Palette-Knife.—Of more immediate necessity to your painting is the palette-knife. You cannot keep the palette clean without it. Now and again you may want to mix colors, or even paint with it. But you constantly get rid of the too much mixed color on your palette with it, and this is essential to good painting. Take some care to select a good knife; have the blade long enough to be springy and flexible, but not too long. About five inches from the wood of the handle to the end of the blade is a good length. And see that it bends in a true curve from one end to the other, and is not stiff at the end and weak in the middle. It should have the same even elasticity that a brush should have.

For painting you need a "trowel palette-knife," which has a bent shank, making the blade and the handle on different levels, so that as you press the blade to the canvas, the fingers are kept away from the painted surface. The shank should be round, and the blade very fine and flexible. The knife should balance nicely in the hand, and turn freely in the fingers, so that you can paint with either face of the blade with equal balance. It takes some care to pick out a good trowel-knife, as a poor one is worse than none.

The Scraper.—You frequently need to scrape rough paint from a canvas or a picture, and you need to scrape strongly to get a dirty palette clean. You can use an old razor for the first purpose, or a piece of broken glass, if you use it carefully, and any old knife can be used to clean your palette. But a regular tool is better than either. The scraper here shown is the best.

The Oil-Cup.—Do not use oils and vehicles very much. But when you need them you must have something to keep them in, convenient to the brush when working. It should have a spring to hold it on to the palette, and of such form that the contents are not easily spilled by the movement of the hand or the body when painting. The form here illustrated is the best that has been brought out so far.

The Oil-Cup.

The Mahl-Stick.—Sometimes you want to rest the hand when painting, for steadiness. The "mahl-" or rest-stick has a ball on the end, which one usually covers with a wad of rag, so that it can be placed against the canvas without injury, and the hand rested on it. It is so light that it can be held with the brushes in the palette hand, and stiff enough to support the brush-hand.