A palette knife is a blunt tool used for mixing or applying paint, with a flexible steel blade. It is primarily used for mixing paint colors, paste, etc., or for marbling, decorative endpapers, etc. The "palette" in the name is a reference to an artist's palette which is used for mixing oil paint and acrylic paints.
Art knives come primarily in two types:
- palette knife resembling a putty knife with a rounded tip, suited for mixing paints on the palette;
- painting knife with a pointed tip, lowered or "cranked" like a trowel, suited for painting on canvas.
While palette knives are manufactured without sharpened cutting edges, with prolonged use they may become "sharpened" by the action of abrasive pigments such as earth colors.
Palette knives are also used in cooking, where their flexibility allows them to easily slide underneath pastries or other items. See frosting spatula.
Famous quotes containing the words palette and/or knife:
“The great God endows His children variously. To some he gives intellect—and they move the earth. To some he allots heart—and the beating pulse of humanity is theirs. But to some He gives only a soul, without intelligence—and these, who never grow up, but remain always His children, are God’s fools, kindly, elemental, simple, as if from His palette the Artist of all had taken one color instead of many.”
—Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958)
“I loved. And a man will guard when he loves.
Their white-gowned democracy was my fair lady.
With her knife lying cold, straight, in the softness of her sweet-flowing sleeve.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)