Week 3 prompt: Textures (#PYH2024)
This week, we are exploring textures.This post is filled with inspirations and 37 ideas of textures for you to try in your art practice.
During week one, we played with monotypes and last week, we played with loose gestural marks.
This week, we play with another important tool for our art practices: texture. The world of texture is vast and filled with so many wonderful possibilities. As visual artists, we often think about composition, color palettes, lines. But a painting or a drawing doesn’t need to be strictly 2D. Different textures can add depth and interest in a piece.
Over time, I’ve collected quite a number of ideas of things I’ve experimented with or on my to-try list. The prompt this week is about playing with these textures.
Watercolors in a metal palette. There are often lots of beautiful textures in our palettes!
Some inspiration
Let’s start of with a little inspiration. I’ve made a Pinterest board, with some artists textured works that caught my eye in the past few weeks. I hope you enjoy them and give these artists a little love!
Pinterest texture inspiration board
The prompt: Let’s create a collection of textures
This week, I would like you to collect textures. A little further down, I’ll share with you my list of textures. Let’s see how many we can try during this week!
1. Choose the format: either one page (can be in your sketchbook) with little thumbnails of textures or small papers to try each texture.
2. Pull from the list of ideas the things that make you curious and try them.
3. Repeat textures with different colors to see the variations of the effect with the different colors.
An alternative is to try everything on a single piece of art. And collect textures on a single page throughout the week. You would end up with a very interesting piece of art!
In this piece, I played with different textures of pinks, mixed on the page with a palette knife, over a monotype from week 1. Funnnnn!
A list of textures to experiment with
The first few effects might work only with watercolors, though I’ve yet to try them with other paint… maybe I would find lovely surprises!
watercolors: fine and coarse salt in wet paint (the paint needs to start drying)
watercolors: alcohol (rubbing alcohol or isopropylic)
watercolors: drops of other colors, or a more saturated hue
watercolors: drops of water, make cauliflowers!
watercolors: straight from the tube on the paper and slowly add water around it
watercolors: granulating paints or granulating mixes
palette knife texture
blobs of paint left to dry on the sheet (like blobs of acrylic paints!)
layers, of different stuff, of acrylic paints
brush strokes
mix in stuff in the paint (ashes, sawdust, sand...)
warm vs cold neocolor pastels (like heat them up!)
add collage in your art
water drops in everything
use bubble wrap to print texture
catalyst wedges and such to leaves marks in the paint
scratch your paper before applying paint
crumble your paper before/after art making (like make a little ball and unfold it)
making thin exacto cuts in the paper, before or after the art
tear the paper
rub the medium in the page, with your fingers!
dendrite patterns, like with monotype
lay a charcoal drawing, add a watercolor wash over it
try to make the thinnest layer of paint possible
try to make the thickest layer of paint possible and mix in another color in there
with color pencils, necolors, make marks with different pressure
let the texture of the paper shine
gold flakes!
take a paper and a pencil and rub the pencil over the paper on the bark of a tree (or another interesting texture!)
smudge some pastel (dry or oil, or both!) on the page
paint over pastels
watercolor on acrylics, would that work?
anyone ever use frosting supplies to apply paints?
use mediums from the art store (mat, sculpting, crackling, glossy…. so many choices!)
use bubbles!
add a little embroidery
gelli printing. adds a little texture to everyhting.
Do you have other ideas to add? Share them in the comments!
A bit of video inspiration
Here is a little video, in real time with texture sounds, that I made while playing with many textures the other day. You can watch it for inspiration, or to keep you company while making art! I’ve shared a timelapse version on instagram if you want to see the 20 second version.
Remember the goal of #PaintYourselfHappyFebruary is to play a little everyday. Make a little space for your creative practice, 5-10 minutes each day does a lot of good (and may even lead to more!).
Have fun and play!
Simone and Stephanie
Wow!! This is all so great—I can’t wait to read through it all closely (had to skim as with I’m registered for two courses on top everything else right now) get engrossed in experimenting!! Thank you SO much for this post💚🌈💚