OUIL405 - Experimenting With Textures

I spent a lot of time experimenting with texture and different ways of making texture. I knew for certain that I wanted to work with gouache as I really like the smooth matte look that it gives once dry and also like the fact that it acts similarly to watercolours when diluted. I played around with a few different techniques of making texture such as using cling film and tissue paper scrunched up over wet paint, sprinkling salt onto wet paint, flicking paint onto wet paper and even used bleach and vodka to create some interest textures. 

Cling film over wet paint - I really liked how this looked, the cling film over the wet paint dragged the paint about leaving you with lighter and darker sections once the paint had dried. I think this worked well to give the appearance of leaves on trees, with lighter and darker section indicating where light would be and where more shadowy areas would be.

Salt on wet paint - This was another technique that I really liked and felt worked really well. The grain of the salt leaves a really small fine print on the paint once its dried, creating little dots where it had hit the paper. I thought this was a good way of indicating leaves on trees. 

Dropping clean water onto wet paint - Another technique that I loved! I think I enjoyed making these textures more than the end result, when you drop the water on the colours blend and merge together really nicely. Still I feel that the end result of this would also work well for the trees. 

Flicking paint onto wet paper - This was very very very messy. Everything ended up covered in paint but it was all worth it because this way of making textures works amazingly! Using different shades of green worked well as the colours kind of merged together once they hit the paper. 

Coffee on wet paint - This one works really well for the path texture that I was trying to create. Even though I initially experimented with this technique using green paint, I could tell from the way that the coffee reacted with the paint that it would work really nicely on brown paint to create and nice muddy looking path. 

Vodka on wet paint - Dripping vodka on the paint worked interestingly also. As the vodka hit the page it created white or lighter coloured rings on the paint which looked really good. As much as I liked the look of this I didn't think it'd really be the kind of effect that I wanted parts of my book to be made out of but this is definitely a technique that I want to investigate further. 

Bleach on wet paint - This was so fun to do and the end results look so cool! Probably not the best idea to be messing around with bleach BUT the end result looks amazing. The bleach lifts the colour from the paper, creating some really weird fluid shapes and marks on the paper. Once again though I wasn't sure if this was the kind of texture I was looking to include in my book but I definitely want to make some more stuff like this. 

Using different brush strokes - A simpler way of making texture but not any less effective. I found that just using different kinds of brushes and different brush strokes was probably the most effective way to build up colour and texture that was quite thick. Textures I made just using a brush and paint would definitely work best for making a grassy background for all the pages.