Art MasterclassMay 2010Each month laterlife.com presents a feature from either The Artist or its sister publication, Leisure Painter.   Art masterclass From The Artist, the monthly magazine for amateur and semi-professional painters, giving practical instruction in painting and drawing in watercolour, pastels and oils, as well as news of art events, exhibitions and competitions open to leisure artists; www.theartistmagazine.co.uk
Painting texture with a brush
Step One By varying the pressure on the brush even in the earliest washes, I began to create the textural effects. Light pressure means effectively stroking it across the surface so minimal pigment is released.
Step Two Almost neat pigment was dropped into wet or damp washes for the deep dark tones.
Step Three As the brush skips over the tooth of the paper it only touches the upper grain, leaving white paper in the hollows and a lovely textural effect.
Enhancing texture with the paper
Step One Load the brush with plenty of pigment, press down on the paper to release colour for the mid and dark tones and just graze the paper for the light tones. The gaps left in the wash create a rough textured effect.
Step Two To create texture and form in the stem use a dryish mixture of colours from your palette. As the narrow brushstroke sweeps across the paper, flickers of untouched white paper will break up the line and bring it life.
Variety with brushwork
The vegetables all have different textures: the capiscums are shiny, the avocados rough, and the leak has streaky lines, so each subject is painted with different brushwork. Always look at the tone, therein lies the clue to painting the texture. A shiny item will have hard-edged tones and a bright edged highlight. A grainy shape will have a softer highlight and require a broken brushstroke to create the sparkles of light on the surface. To create the streaky lines on a leak (or grain of wood) use a flat or round brush, load it with paint, then physically separate the hairs before you paint. Each hair will lay a separate line and create the linear effect. Step One The early washes of the painting establish both the forms and the indication of texture. Always make sure your forms make sense before applying textural effects to their surfaces.
Step Two Here you can see the variation of textures on the different vegetables and fruit.
Using a sponge
Start with the lighter tones. I used aureolin for the leaves that catch the lights on the top of the tree. Load the sponge in the palette then pat it on the paper, twisting, turning and squeezing it so that it makes an irregular pattern. Build the clumps of foliage with increasingly darker tones, pressing the sponge down hard for the masses and lightly for the leafy edges Step One Work from light to dark, building the foliage masses with ever darkening tones.
Step Two I added Prussian blue to raw umber and to burnt umber to make the darker tones, allowing wet areas to dry before patting on the next tone.
Step Three Using an old toothbrush dipped in paint, I spattered extra speckles onto the dark areas by pulling across the bristles and releasing paint onto the paper. This creates a more directional or random spatter than the sponge. I was careful to protect areas I did not wish to affect.
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