I Finally Finished This Painting

I started this in January. I love the look of palette knife painting, big gobs of paint applied sloppily to a canvas, but I'd never tried it before. I bought this huge 30x40" canvas on sale after Christmas, and fully intended to paint it right away.

Life intervened. I got as far as this wash.


Since the canvas was really large, the best place to store it seemed to be to just hang it on the wall where I intended to put it. But life kept getting in the way, so this wash has been hanging on my wall for seven months. My husband and friends got used to the wash, sort of fell in love with the wash, and tried to convince me not to finish the painting. The nerve. But now I'm unemployed, so there.

I bought a nice metal easel at Michaels with a coupon ($40 off!) and went to work. Before this I was using a display easel from Ikea which was not adequate to the vigorous nature of palette knife painting.



Palette knives are so messy and raw, I love them.


I also used a glaze for the first time. I wanted to mute the colors. The glaze is a little too glossy for me, but I love how it pulls everything together. I also love the big gobs of paint.




I got the frame from Ebay. I did not realize when I bought a giant 30x40" canvas that you cannot buy prefab 30x40" frames, and I did not want to spend hundreds of dollars getting this piece custom framed.

I discovered that frame shops sell unclaimed frames on Ebay for excellent prices, although shipping for this was very expensive, it was still cheaper than custom framing. I attached the canvas to the frame using pipe clamps -- forty cents each at Osh -- and hung it with some simple picture wire.

Here it is hanging on my wall:


Ah... it's done.