
One of my playing-about-with-paint experiments this last month has been to try a bit of finger-painting, to see how I got on with a real hands-on experience in getting a proper feel for applying the paint. Here I was just trying to see how the acrylic paint blends and flows under my fingers, and ended up with a curvy colourful swoosh on a piece of practice paper…

And then I tried out a basic A4 landscape on canvas board, also done in acrylics with only my fingers. It worked reasonably well, considering, but I realise that any serious finger-painting is probably best done on much larger canvases, as the only way you can possibly create any level of detail using your fingertips is to have a large enough surface to paint on that your rather clumsy, blunt-instrument finger-marks look delicate and small!
I’m glad I gave it a go, and I may indeed spontaneously use a finger or two on occasion to blend in a bit of paint as and when needed, but I wouldn’t necessarily try to do a full painting again using only my fingers – I found I got cramp quite quickly, but then I do have arthritis in some of my finger joints so perhaps that didn’t help… 🙂