Monday 1 August 2011

Sketchbook Day 18 - jungle texture

Time to go out into the garden or bring a bit of garden indoors. If you do not have a garden, you could choose to work from a plant. Place a frame in front to select a view to draw. You are looking for small scale pattern - a sort of visual texture for this series of drawings.

Set up a frame in a position that you feel you can work at over the next few days. Both these two outdoor frames can be brought in if it rains.
 
The next three images show frames stuck to the window so you can work from indoors and the bottom left frame is placed over a house plant.

TODAY'S TASK -  A new sketchbook for me - without spiral binding this time!
Use a craft knife or a scalpel or a blade from a scissors to scratch marks onto the page surface. I can't show an image of this but only the results after the colour has been added!Use a dry marker for this - pastels, oil pastels, pencils.

I learnt about this 'scratching out' method in the 'Watercolour' exhibition at Tate Britain recently. Several 19th century painters used it by scratching back to the white paper - after the water colour paint had been applied, using any sharp tool such as a pin, needle, knife, quill or thumbnail. It was often used to suggest water ripples and texture of bridges - not really a major feature, but I'm sure we can take it a step further! I've tried it before and after applying the colour. You can get some quite impressive textural effects.
If using water soluble pencils, you could try blending with water - notice how the scratched 'burrs' of the paper surface seem to attract the colour.

TODAY'S TIPS - You will be able to add some of the methods over the next few days so don't feel you need to add all the information you can see at these first stages - just a generalised rhythm of lines.
Try holding your blade differently so the edge of your blade scrapes the paper surface to get wider marks.
Try using something else such as a sand paper perhaps?

More use of scraping tomorrow!

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