One of the acrylic painting techniques I use a lot is scraping back paint with a tool. Usually, it is a palette knife or a soft spatula with textured tips. Sometimes I use a rounded embossing tool. Never use a sharp implement on canvas.

What Does Scraping Back Achieve?

Depending on how you paint, scraping back can enable you to:

• Expose the colour of the layer beneath
• Create a ridge for texture to show through onto the next layer
• Provide an opportunity to create an edge with light and shade
• Imply a sketched background
• Emphasise a detail you want to bring out
• Help to define edges of shapes and elements in your work.

I use it for all of these things. Here are some of the tools I use to do this. You can probably tell the newest tools are the textured palette knives which I already love.

Examples of Paintings Using the Scraped Back Technique

Mark making with tools is an individual style, so your marks will be different to mine. I highly recommend getting some small canvases or pieces of paper and just playing. That is the best way of learning. You will quickly come know what you like and don’t like.

If you enjoyed this post, you can see more in the 100 Days of Art project here. Three of the paintings above can be viewed in more detail on my Bluethumb page.