T is for Texture

Textures are fun. I have to say I enjoy creating textures. From my bubble painting –

to my oil pastel experiments –

and my acrylic experiments –

and, of course, my butterfly paintings –

They’ve all been extremely fun to create. Of course there are two aspects of texture – visual texture and tactile texture.

Visual texture is for the eyes only. A mixture of pattern, colour and feel. Feel with your eyes? Sure! How a colour feels, how a pattern causes you to react. Emotional impact.

Tactile texture…run you fingertips across the texture and find it three-dimensional. I’ve recently been experimenting with stencils and modeling paste. Tonight I took it a step further and created a stencil designed to make a texture. A fairly simple one and I certainly can expand on this experiment, but it can be used to create a tactile texture in any case.

I created the stencil with a hole punch and some juice carton.

I’m still really excited about this technique. It has so many possibilities.

Other tactile textures I’ve been playing with tonight include gesso –

For once in my life I didn’t do swirls. Plans for this include swiping paint over the top of it to highlight the texture.

The gesso was thrown down in my art journal and is drying as I type. On the opposite page I’ve slapped down some clear granular gel laced with some black flecks. The combination has some interesting possibilities.

I could go on for a long time, there are so many textures I could play with. I certainly am exploring new textures all the time and playing around with ideas. One technique I’ve found very inspirational is to create a background or texture, just slap in down, and create a piece of work from that. Half the challenge is taken once you have something on the canvas/page and textures are fantastic for doing that.

Best wishes,
Liz