Palette knife and impasto: how heavy texture is made

Knife versus brush

A brush drags paint into lines and soft transitions. A palette knife lays paint down in flat, sharp-edged planes and ridges. Knife work reads as bold and sculptural; brushwork reads as fluid. Many textured paintings use both.

How thick can it go?

Impasto can range from a few millimeters to more than a centimeter in the thickest passages. Thicker isn't always better: very heavy paint is more prone to cracking if the layers beneath aren't dry, adds weight and makes rolling risky.

Can a textured painting be rolled?

Heavy texture is best shipped stretched, or crated for large pieces. If a textured painting must be rolled, it needs to be fully cured, rolled face-out around a wide tube with soft interleaving, and unrolled promptly on arrival.

Why designers and hotels like it

Textured abstract paintings work at every distance. From across a lobby they read as color and shape; up close, the ridges and planes of paint give them a physical presence a flat image can't. They also change with the light through the day.

What goes wrong

• Building thick layers over paint that's still wet underneath, which leads to cracking
• Paint mixed too thin to hold its shape
• Rolling or shipping before the texture has cured