Do you find yourself in a rut or bored with your current paintings? Has your painterly enthusiasm been lacking? Maybe it’s about time you started thinking about the negative space of your compositions as areas in which to focus some of your artistic energy.
Not every square inch of your painting needs or wants attention to detail, but a painting that’s rich with textural elements is far more interesting than a painting devoid of nuances and variation. You don’t need to become a fussy painter to add interest to your background; there are plenty of opportunities to add color, depth and design without spending a lot of time. Regardless of your medium, there are a number of methods to add texture and fun to almost any painting.
Some techniques are more suitable for one medium or another, but you can probably adapt most techniques to almost any type of paint.
Using Paint To Texturize Your Painting
Let’s look at some of the neat ways you can add texture to your paintings…
Drybrush
Drybrush works best with a support that has some texture. If you’re working with hot pressed paper or a smooth, sanded gesso, your drybrush application doesn’t have much to grab as the paint passes over the surface. If you’re using a drybrush technique on a smooth surface, you’ll need to use a very light hand for the paint to give you much texture.
Scraping
You’ve got to be quick if you’re painting with a watercolor medium, as the paint will very quickly absorb into the paper. Use lots of water, saturated color and have your scraping implement at the ready. You can use almost any hard surface to scrape paint, as long as you’re careful not to damage your support. A palette knife, brush end or kitchen flatware are all candidates, but things like credit cards, combs and other firm flat shapes are all potential tools.
Washes
Broad expanses of color are generally laid down with a paint laden, juicy brush. Don’t be miserly when you’re painting washes and be confident with your brushstrokes. Drop in clear water to wet, watermedia paint or drip other colors into your wash. Angle your painting to guide the flow of the paint to create movement. You can also paint a gradient from light to dark or from one color to another.
Spattering
Paint flinging is a fun and messy way to add a lot of spontaneous texture. Just make sure you have the surrounding area protected against wild paint trajectories.
You can use a paint-filled brush to create large areas of splatter that will contain some large dollops of paint. Use a toothbrush and the end of a palette knife or your thumb for adding a small, mist like spray of fine paint droplets.
Dripping And Pouring
Dripping gives you some control over the location and angle of the paint you apply. Use any handy tool that gives you the amount of paint you wish to drip. Change the angle of your support to vary the path your paint travels.
Pouring is much more dramatic, and can be a delightful success or a miserable failure. Proceed with caution and be prepared to use a lot of paint with this method.
Stamping
Stamping is great for repeating a shape multiple times or adding geometric forms to a surface. Stamping can occur as an underlayment, during the painting process or can be added during the final stages of your painting.
Stamping With Natural Objects
Use any surface that will hold paint to add shapes to your painting. As children, many of us have painted one side of a leaf and pressed it onto paper to create a monoprint. This simple device is very useful to add the appearance of natural shapes to your painting. Anything you can apply paint to is at risk of becoming an impromptu stamp.
Carving Your Own Stamps
Another childhood art project is also a good way to create your own custom stamps. A carved stamp made of rubber, hard sponge or even a potato can be a creative way to make your own custom stamps. Why buy mass-produced consumer stamps when, with a little creativity, you can make your own unique designs?
Stamping With Sponges
Sea sponges are available in many sizes and have wonderful, random designs of varying size holes to create delightful texture. Use a small amount of paint and lightly tap the surface of your support to add random texture. Overlap slightly to avoid any straight, hard edges.
Stenciling
Stenciling is the opposite of stamping. You can use stenciling to add shapes, just as you do with stamping, but with this technique, you manage the paint as it is applied directly to the support with a brush. You have more control and have the opportunity to manipulate the paint.
Drybrush Pouncing
The basic paint application for stenciling is to use a flat-bottomed paintbrush and very little paint. The paint is applied with a vertical up and down motion called pouncing. You increase the number of pounces in an area to build up a denser application of the paint. This drybrush application ensures paint does not bleed underneath the edges of the stencil.
Letters And Numbers
Lettering is a skill unto itself, so stenciling is the only way most artists can achieve perfect numbers and lettering. These stencils are available in many sizes and fonts, so a quick trip to a stencil website will garner a huge variety of fonts for every occasion.
Commercial Stencils
Commercial stencils are more popular than ever, and there are an almost unlimited number of designs available. These shapes can add interest and depth to your paintings. However, as with any other device, they can quickly become a focal point instead of merely an interesting addendum. Your originality’s the focal point, so don’t go overboard.
Repurposed Items As Stencils
Lots of found objects are stencil-worthy. An old doily, a scrap of lace, a punched metal plate or a piece of wire mesh are all possible stencils. Look around your house, garage or a thrift store for more stencil ideas.
Watercolor Texture Tricks
These next methods are useful for water media artists. Oil painters, egg tempera painters and encaustic fans, just sit back and drool.
Salt Or Alcohol Texture
A light sprinkling of salt or a few drops of alcohol can add fantastic texture to a watercolor. This requires a rich, juicy application of paint and critical timing for the salt or alcohol to do its magic. The painted surface must be shiny wet, but not too wet. If the paper is too dry or there isn’t enough paint, the technique won’t work either. In addition, coarse salt gives dramatic results and fine salt usually provides very subtle textural variations.
Staining paints and sedimentary paints will give different results too, so this is just one big experiment that just continues to evolve.
Wax Resist
Clear paraffin and color crayons can be used with water media. You can apply clear paraffin to create random or figurative shapes and texture, and you can use color crayons to add an additional layer of color as well as texture.
Plastic Wrap
Lay in a juicy wash of paint in random or planned colors and areas. You can either lay the plastic wrap down flat or bunch it up and squash it on the wet, painted surface. Leave the surface alone until it has dried thoroughly.
Remove the plastic wrap and voilà; you’ve created abundant random texture. This is particularly good for indicating things like rocks, cliffs and other shapes composed of random linear planes.
Next time, we’ll look at other ways to add texture to your painting with things other than paint. We’ll add a third dimension to take your painting to the next level.
