Finger painting

I was work­ing on a still life this evening and real­ized, once again, what won­der­ful paint­ing tools I have attached to my hands. Oil paint seems made for fin­ger paint­ing. Fin­gers are great for smooth­ing paint, blend­ing, cre­at­ing cer­tain kinds of tex­tural effects, and shap­ing blobs of paint. Even very early oil painters used their fin­gers often (we know because art his­to­ri­ans find lots of fin­ger­prints in Renais­sance paintings).

I tend to use my fin­gers mostly in the early stages of paint­ing, when I’m work­ing large and am not too wor­ried about detail. Fin­gers are great for mak­ing sure that you don’t com­mit to hard edges too early. While work­ing, I am con­tin­u­ally smoosh­ing with my fin­gers and wip­ing them clean on my t-shirt or a rag. Fin­gers are eas­ier to clean than brushes, so there is less ten­dency to inad­ver­tently con­t­a­m­i­nate one pas­sage with a color from some other part of the painting.

Of course, it’s impor­tant not to get paint in your eyes or mouth. I am very care­ful not to touch my face or hair while paint­ing. When I’m done, I wash my hands very thor­oughly. That’s par­tic­u­larly impor­tant if you use poten­tially toxic pig­ments, but good prac­tice no mat­ter what.