Creating Texture in Watercolor Paintings

Creating Texture

This is the best portion of creating a picture for me. I've learned to see beyond the preliminary washes that start to give form to a picture and expression forward to what can be done with texturing. Sometimes those first washes that set up the composition can look bland and uninteresting. For a beginning watercolorist, those first phases can be the most discouraging. It doesn't look like I desire it, you say. That's where texturing come ups in to convey those forms to life.

I utilize respective tested and true techniques to accomplish the expression I want. My tools are a few very worn brushes, some with just a few bristles. For a worn look, I utilize scumbling quite often. This technique affects using a dry to muffle brush, with fairly concentrated colour is hang-up colour onto a shape. Look at the bowl on the right in this painting. To see this image, chink here. http://www.weborglodge.com/sl_pasta_tonight.htm

Those darker Marks are scumbling. Dry brushwood is similar, but with this technique, the colour is more than like being painted on, with a dry brushwood and concentrated color. The surface of the table was dry brushed to give that wood grain look. Another favourite technique of mine is splatter. I'll utilize it on most anything I desire to give a worn/used visual aspect to. You can see it on the less right of the bowl. All these texturing techniques give fictional character to an object. The bowl instead of being just any bowl is a well-used one. Tons of dinners or bars probably started in that bowl. It also gives it an old-timer feeling, a feeling I wanted to give this rustic still life.

More subtly, shadows, like those under the onion and of the Allium sativum on the onion, aid to set up form. Highlights will make the same thing as also seen on the onion and bowl. I often happen that highlights, whether I've saved the achromatic with masking or I've scrubbed off or am using a spot of titanium White really are the icing on the cake. So if something in your picture looks a spot lifeless, give it a life of its own, with some texturing.

Happy Painting!