Textures

The clouds in the sky, the bark of a tree, the skin of a dog, the wrinkling of a fabric... You are absolutely bound, to see them all around, as regular as it may sound, these are what textures are.

I roamed around the house and from each corner of the room, abducted a few things, few very basic things- cling film, toothbrush, sponge and then opened up my stationary drawers and pulled out the basic basic stuff- paints, photo-inks, crayons, glue etc.

With all this material at hand, what followed was hours of fun-filled exploration making textures.

Take a piece of sponge. Soak poster paint onto it and get set go- let your imagination flow. I made some basic curves in shades and hues of turquoise and added a few lines of white with fluid.

I watered an entire sheet, dropped paints of different viscosity on it- poster paint, photo ink, water color. Then covered the entire area with random pattern of glue and crumbled a cling film over it. All this is to be done very quickly. Let it dry for 24 hours. Then, when I removed the cling film, what I got was a beautiful crumbled texture with an analogous scheme of orange, yellow and yellow-orange.

Getting back to the basics! I picked up a simple bubble wrap and brushed poster paint over it in a random manner. A very thing layer of poster paint! Then, i placed the bubble wrap upside down on a piece of paper and applied some pressure. As I took the bubble wrap off, what I got was this beautiful random texture!

All of us have seen oil paintings-those complex pieces of art on canvas as huge as walls of a living room! I once got inspired and bought myself a pack of oil colors. Well, did I make a painting too? Not really. I just used those oil colors for something called a floating texture. I filled water in a broad bowl, and poured some oil colors onto it. Oil being lighter than water, floats over it. Then using a straw, i made a random swirl with them. Then, I put a piece of paper onto the surface of the water and picked it up. Let ir dry for a day and the result is what you see above!

Learning a technique is fun. Doing it is even more pleasing. But what's satisfying is creating an artwork with everything you've learnt. So, I wrote a few lines and started working on the theme to create an artwork- using textures, shapes and color schemes.

"Take it or break it

Keep it real or fake it

Just make sure your thoughts are right

Because Life's what you make it"

This composition has 3 major sections. Each section has various shapes depicting the chores of everyday life. Just like we see all kinds of emotions in our daily life, this artwork has different colors. Red and Yellow for the happy, lively, exuberant sides of life and Grey and Black for the dull, monotonous, gloomy ones. The next step was to decide textures. I made many, put one here, put one there and finalised 3 basic ones I wanted to use. Apart from that, I used solid patches of color.

The background is done with steadtler water color pencils. I colored only the edges and with a watered brush, spread it to obtain the background seen.

Designing is not tough- it's a simple impression of everything on your mind! So get, set, go... Pen down your thoughts, play with a few basic things around your house, create textures and get your own artwork! :)