The Palette Knife Technique Behind Simon Kenny’s Abstract Paintings

By Simon Kenny | 8 min read

My palette knife technique sits at the physical centre of my abstract painting process. I load the blade with thick, sculptural strokes of colour, then scrape back through dried layers to expose what came before. The knife builds and excavates, and the finished surface carries a visible record of every decision made along the way.

Welcome back to the sanctuary. We have already wandered through the creative chaos of the studio and the ritual that opens a working day. Now we get physical. This is the part of the process where paint actually meets the surface, and where most of my paintings are built and partly undone within the same afternoon.

What is the palette knife technique in abstract painting?

The palette knife technique is a method of applying and removing paint with a flat steel blade rather than a brush, used to build thick, textured layers and then cut back into them to reveal what lies underneath. For me, it is less a technique than a way of working with my whole arm, rather than just my wrist.

A brush coaxes paint onto a canvas. A knife commands it. I have described my palette knives before as extensions of my hand, and that still feels closer to the truth than calling them tools. They are the instruments through which I build a painting up, and just as often, the instruments through which I tear it back down again.

I reach for a knife rather than a brush when the painting needs weight. Some passages call for a soft, blended edge, and I will pick up a brush without thinking twice. Other passages need to stand proud of the canvas, catching real light across a real ridge, and only a blade can accomplish this.

What shapes and sizes of palette knife do I use?

I keep a small working set rather than a large collection: two or three trowel-shaped knives for broad, sweeping strokes, and a couple of smaller diamond-shaped blades for tighter, more deliberate marks. The size of the blade decides the width of a stroke.

A longer, more flexible blade bends slightly under pressure, which softens the edge of a stroke and suits open, gestural passages. A shorter, stiffer blade holds a harder line, which I reach for when a passage needs a clean, defined edge against a softer area beside it.

How do I build texture with a palette knife?

Building texture with a palette knife starts with loading the blade heavily, sometimes with two or three colours at once, and laying the paint down in a single confident pass. The knife will not let me hedge, because there is no soft blending edge to retreat into if I change my mind halfway through.

This is the technique I reach for when I am trying to translate something with real physical force behind it, a wave breaking or a storm working itself out over the sea.

Impasto, the art term for an area of thick paint or texture on a canvas, has a long history in Western painting. Tate traces its increased use through nineteenth century landscape and Romantic painting, before it became close to compulsory in modern art.

Claim: Impasto became a near-standard feature of modern painting once artists accepted that a canvas surface could hold its own reality rather than acting only as a window onto an illusion, with the texture and shape of a mark helping to carry the artist’s feeling.
Source: Tate, ‘Impasto’ art term glossary, tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/i/impasto, accessed July 2026.

I think about it the same way. The physical, raised surface of a knife-built passage becomes an equivalent for the energy in the thing I am painting, rather than a flat picture of it. It is one of the reasons a photograph of my work rarely does it justice.

The paint has real depth in person, and it catches a room’s light differently depending on where you stand. Colour choice changes the effect completely too, because a pale tone catches a ridge very differently to a dark one, and I often will not know which is right until the light shifts across a single afternoon.

Why does the paint itself matter for holding texture?

Not every paint holds a knife mark well. I work mainly in heavy body acrylic and stiff oil specifically because both are formulated to stand up rather than settle back down once applied, which is what lets a ridge stay sharp overnight instead of slumping into a puddle by morning.

Claim: Golden Heavy Body Acrylics are formulated as thick paints designed to retain the texture of brushstrokes and tool marks, including palette knife marks, once applied to the canvas.
Source: Golden Artist Colors, Heavy Body Acrylics product page, goldenartistcolors.com/products/golden-artist-acrylics/heavy-body, accessed July 2026.

That stiffness is what makes the whole technique durable, not just dramatic on the day I paint it. A softer, runnier paint would erase every decision the knife made within minutes of leaving the canvas, however good it looked in the moment.

What happens when I scrape back or excavate a layer?

Scraping back is the excavation half of the palette knife technique, where I cut through a dried or half dried layer of paint with the edge of the blade to expose an earlier colour underneath.

A painting might begin with a vibrant red ground, get buried under a contemplative blue a week later, and then have that blue partly cut away to let a flicker of the red breathe again.

I am not the first painter to work this way, and I doubt I will be the last. Frank Auerbach, whose paintings Tate holds up as one of the twentieth century’s most extreme examples of impasto, was known for scraping whole compositions back to bare canvas and starting again, sometimes dozens of times, before he felt it had been resolved.

Claim: Frank Auerbach (1931 to 2024) is cited by Tate among the mid-twentieth-century artists who took impasto to its extreme, alongside Jean Dubuffet and Leon Kossoff.
Source: Tate, artist entry for Frank Auerbach, tate.org.uk/art/artists/frank-auerbach-676, accessed July 2026.

I think of the excavation itself as closer to geology than painting. Out on the coast near the studio, the chalk cliffs are a visible record of thousands of years of deposit and erosion, with each storm cutting back into strata laid down long before it.

A knife-scraped canvas works on the same logic, just compressed into weeks rather than millennia. Every ridge and hollow in the finished piece is a decision I made and then partly reversed.

There is a physical, almost percussive quality to this part of the work. The scrape of steel against paint has a sound of its own, and I never know exactly what colour or texture the blade will uncover until it is already exposed.

Why do some of my paintings take months or years to finish?

Some paintings resolve in a single sitting, and others need to be built, scraped back, rested and rebuilt over many months because the layering process itself needs time to breathe. I will put a difficult piece in a corner of the studio for weeks and only return to it once I can look at it with fresh eyes.

When I do return, I am not simply finishing a plan I made at the start. I am negotiating with a painting that already has a history of its own, built from every layer I have added and cut away.

Some of my longest pieces have argued with me for the better part of two years before I would call them settled.

That patience depends on the medium as much as it depends on me. Acrylic locks in place within minutes, which suits a knife rebuilding a passage within a single sitting, while oil stays workable for days, letting me return mid-week to a passage that has not yet skinned over.

I go into that distinction properly when I compare oil and acrylic painting methods. The support underneath is just as decisive, since canvas, linen and wooden panels each behave differently under a loaded knife, which is why the ground a painting is built on gets its own instalment later in this series.

The painting you eventually see carries every version it passed through on the way, even the ones I painted over completely. I like that. It means the finished piece was never really a single decision, but the last layer left standing after months of ones I chose not to keep.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a special palette knife to build texture like this?

No single knife is required. I use a small set of trowel and diamond-shaped steel knives in different sizes, chosen for the width of stroke and the sharpness of edge each passage needs, rather than any one specialist brand or expensive set.

Is palette knife painting harder to learn than painting with a brush?

It asks for a different instinct rather than more skill. A brush allows correction as you go, while a knife commits paint in a single confident stroke, so the learning curve is really about trusting decisive marks over gradual blending, which takes practice rather than talent.

How do you look after a painting with heavy palette knife texture?

Keep it out of direct sunlight and away from damp or fluctuating humidity, and avoid touching the raised surface, since the ridges are more exposed to knocks than a flat painted surface. Archival materials and a properly sealed support keep the texture stable for decades.

How long does a single palette knife painting usually take?

There is no fixed timeline. A smaller, more direct piece can resolve in a single working session, while a large, heavily layered canvas can take months of building, resting and scraping back before I consider it finished, sometimes across several separate sittings.

The record in the paint

The palette knife technique is where my paintings become physical rather than simply visual, built in confident, loaded strokes and then cut back to let earlier decisions show through. It is slower and more honest than it looks in a photograph, and every ridge in a finished piece marks a choice I made and then, in part, undid.

I still find the sound of steel against dried paint one of the most satisfying parts of a working day in the studio, and I doubt that will ever wear off. Explore the full collection at simonkennyart.com, where several current pieces show the layering and excavation described here, or get in touch directly to enquire about a specific work or a commission.