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Art Glossary: Painting Knife

By Marion Boddy-Evans, About.com

Art Glossary Painting Knife

A painting knife can be used instead of a brush.

Image: © Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc.
Definition:

A painting knife is a springy, shaped, metal spatula used for painting instead of a brush. The painting technique is a bit like putting butter on bread, and is especially useful for creating texture.

Painting knives comes in quite a variety of shapes and sizes. Diferent painting knives produce different effects, for example a short blade produces angular strokes while a long blade makes it easy to put down sweeps of colour.

A painting knife is different to a palette knife, which is used for mixing paints, although many people use the same name for both.

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