Exploring my local art store I discovered something called a colour shaper.

I had no idea what it was or how it should be applied and the lady in the art store wasn’t much help either. I had just recently been asked to paint a bright colourful fish in thick paint for someone’s bathroom and this looked like an interesting tool for the job.

I bought two different sizes and shapes, the angle chisel and the taper point, and brought them home to experiment with. They are a highly versatile artists tool, ideal for applying and removing paint (I am sure they are wonderful in other mediums, but that wasn’t where I experimented). Plus I think for pencil, pencil crayon and charcoal I personally would prefer to use a ‘stubby’ rather than a blender with a silicone head. The unique non-stick quality of the tip means easy cleaning; just dip in water and wipe clean after use. The Colour Shaper is available in a range of sizes and different tip shapes offering you perfect colour control with both linear strokes and broad marks. They aren’t cheap which was why I only bought two. With time I might go back and buy the broader chisel, but for now these work perfectly and are versatile enough.

I bought one thick wedge shaped one for a broader application which I used on the body of the fish and the background, and a thin more pencil like one, which I used for the area around the eye and mouth.

Unlike a brush, the marks made by a Colour Shaper are solid, there’s no hair or bristle texture. They’re especially great for sgraffito! Sgraffito is a specific technique where a top layer of colour is scratched to reveal a colour beneath. The term comes from the Italian words graffire meaning (literally) “to scratch”. You can’t pick up much paint with one as there aren’t any hairs to hold the paint as with a brush. So they’re not very useful for taking large quantities of paint from your palette to your painting. I used a palette knife for this. Where they are useful is for creating texture in thick paint, or in thin paint that’s begun to dry (so it doesn’t simply spread to fill the area again). I used a brush to block in an underpaint of colour for the fish and then used the colour shaper to spread the thicker paint around revealing some of the underpainting in places. It’s a bit like using your finger except not such a blunt, rounded tool.

Note the angles of the thicker shaper in the two photos above. It offered me a variety of sides for creating texture and line while applying the paint to the canvas. The flat broad side I used for the body, and the background application, and the top end and edges I used for the fins, tongue and mouth area together. Areas of the mouth and eye I further defined with the more pencil-like shaper.

What I did like was the easy flexibility of the silicone stump and how smoothly it moved the paint around still leaving a textured quality behind in the paint. Lots of fun, especially for a quick little scribble with paint on canvas.