Exercise 2: Mixing materials into paint

Another open exercise, the main objective to mix my chosen texture into the paint before application.

I started by raiding the kitchen cupboard and found dried rosemary, some poppy seeds, red lentils, cane sugar and some crushed peppercorns. I mixed a very small amount of each of these substances into paint to see their effect.

I was initially concerned that the acrylic paint wouldn’t hold these textures, especially the larger peppercorns, red lentils & lumps of cane sugar but the paint has held pretty effectively on all of them.

I moved straight onto applying the textures to an A4 ground previously prepared with plain gesso. The method of adding texture to the paint before applying it worried me slightly, very much different to laying down the texture to the ground and allowing it to dry as per the previous exercise. So not only was I trying to deal with a lumpy and unpredictable paint I was then trying to apply it to the ground in some semblance of order!

I added some mixing media and as the texture went on I followed its lines and the final piece looked like this…

Once the coloured texture was in place I then applied paint whilst it was all still wet in thick application and I’m pleased with the overall effect. I feel it is harder than the previous exercise effects but I like it just the same. Again I added some gloss varnish to the three large vertical strips to help highlight the relief.