First attempt with a painting knife

Is this oil or acrylic? They both handle a bit differently. I like it, whatever it is! The whole pleasure of painting with a knife is that you can get vibrant and exciting results with it. OK, no one's going to call this subtle and restrained, but many of us think we're being very brave and bold at the time, and look at our paintings in the cold light of dawn, and realize we've been more cautious than we needed to be. As an immediate impression - a genuinely impressionist painting, if you like - I don't have any criticisms of this at all. But it depends on what you were after - a strong painting like this can be very satisfying to do, and it's the sort of thing I'd probably put away for a while (I'd have to if it was an oil, because the thick reds and yellows will take an age to dry) and then look at again. I might think well, I enjoyed that, but ... let it stand for just what it is and don't think it a great painting (though it contains some very nice touches - the movement in the water, the scratches with the knife into the foliage to indicate branches, the deep darks and no fiddly bits) but a satisfying bit of fun. And by the way, I'm sure it would find a buyer if you put it on sale: people like these strong, rich primaries. If you were after a more subtle painting, which I'm sure you weren't, this won't have been it; that doesn't matter at all, but it's worth saying that huge subtlety and restraint can be achieved with the knife if that's what you want to achieve. There was a painter named, I think, Harvey or Harley Crossley - other members here may remember him, and his name, my memory for which is pretty awful - who specialized in quite beautiful, gentle knife paintings - he would apply a rich mix of paint with his knife, and then remove most of it, leaving a thin residue on the canvas: the wastage of expensive paint must have been huge, but the results were worth it. So you can go one way - plough the paint on, almost mixing any old colour on your palette because if you're after rich darks then that's not a bad way to achieve them and then using pure Cadmiums out of the tube: that'll give you this sort of painting, and there's nothing wrong with that. Or you can mix paint as carefully as though you were going to use your best brushes - just quite a lot more of it - and apply it vigorously, or more thoughtfully. The temptation is to use a lot of paint, but to go for the cheaper paints - the pthalos rather than the cobalts, for instance; well you can achieve subtlety with those, it just takes a little more thought and effort. This works absolutely fine for what it is - a loosening up exercise, a good play with strong colour. If you wanted to take this further, then yes - you'd moderate the colour, losing the garish element but not the richness we hope; you'd tidy up the details rather than have somewhat indeterminate dark shapes in the water; you'd introduce a few more features in the far bank where the hot embers of the dying sun caught them. But you'd also be very, very careful not to lose that vital spark of life you've got in this painting - and that takes practice. To see how hot, powerful colour can be used in oil painting - not with a knife in his case - take a look at the website of the late Ken Bushe. Ken was a Scottish artist, living up in Broughty Ferry, and painted the sky, clouds, sunsets such as I'd never seen anyone achieve before. He died far too soon, but has left a great collection of work and his partner maintains his websites. He also explained his practices now and then - I think you'd benefit as I have (and anyone would) from taking a long look. Two more painters for you, who often used the knife - R. O. Dunlop, RA, and Sir Kyffin Williams. They both had the vigour, but also the complex colour mixes that can really bring this way of painting crashing into life.

Nothing wrong with expressive and spontaneous work like this piece and it looks as though you have enjoyed the experience. However, it does need some refinement in many areas, there is rather too much black (I hope that it isn't black out of the tube, always mix your own), so I would have introduced another colour into the composition but that's all a matter of personal preference. It's not a bad idea to combine traditional brush work initially and then work the painting up using a knife, that always works better for me. As Robert has suggested, do have a look at other well known artists' work, Kyffin Williams is a firm favourite of mine and well worth a look. This style and technique of painting is very rapid of course as there is little or no detail (no bad thing either) so keep on practising, these sketches should take no longer that say ten or fifteen minutes to produce so you can get really let yourself go and enjoy your work, well done and stick at it.

I like the painting, it's got strong colours and an interesting compostion. You could try adding texture paste to your acrylic and this will give you thicker impasto. There's some good palette knife paintings on this site: https://artuk.org/discover/artists/williams-kyffin-19182006