Part 1 Form and Gesture

Project 1, Exercise 2

Experimenting with texture

I struggled with this exercise at first and it took me quite a while to get started. I started by trying to draw the textures of a natural sponge and a piece of coral – both of which I found very difficult. After changing tack and working on a textile pattern/texture I was able to return to the challenge!

The textile example was a cushion cover:

This was the cushion cover texture which I intepreted using hard pastel and pencil on three scales:

I felt it worked quite succesfully and broke the ice to challenge the coral and sponge again.

I attempted a little bit of frottage with these objects but the paper was too thick and too small – so I decided to try with other paper/medium later.

The shell, coral and sponge gave me some interesting contrasts to try out as textures and in the end I made some reasonable pencil sketches of the items along withy their textures.

For my frottage I used the objects from before plus some leaves and bark found just outside the front of my house. I used a graphite block to make these pieces on A4 printer  copy paper (75g):

I used both sides of the bark – the one on the RH side was the reverse side and worked better with more interesting effects

I then used a variety of materials to make other imaginative patterns/textures in a larger (A3) sketchbook:

There is obviously a never-ending amount of textures to find and experiment with – in addition to an infinite number of materials/mediums to work with. This was a good start and I will continue to search for and use other exciting/creative solutions to my drawings.

I will continue to experiment with textures and mediums/materials regularly in my sketchbook and workpieces, as I feel that this is a never ending challenge for the successful artist.