Art prompts to try out some textures!

[alias_sqbr]

I've been experimenting with making my own water colour textures and want to test out the ones I've made before making any more. So! Please have a look at my current experiments and give me art prompts you think would suit that colour scheme, or that the colours make you think of. Original or fannish, and don't worry too much about having to match the texture I'll be digitally messing with them.

The textures:


1: blue gradient on printer paper.
2: Blue-green gradient on water colour paper.
3: Same gradient with darker blue added.
4: Wet-on-wet yellow-orange swirls. I used cling wrap and paper towels to mess around with the texture.

I started with $1 Dora the Explorer water colours on printer paper. ODDLY ENOUGH THIS DID NOT TURN OUT WELL. Then I read some tutorials and visited the art store. All up the paints, paper and brushes cost me $40 and that was getting the cheapest stuff. This is why I like digital art.

Comments

[astridv]

Oh I like that last one. I can't think of a prompt right now but I'm imagining something with stark ink lines on transparent background could look good with that.

Watercolors are pretty expensive but they have the advantage they last long. So you have a large lump sum once, and then just have to replace a tube here or there. I think these days I spend most money on watercolor paper.

Brushes make a huge difference too. I now use real marten hair for watercolor and they're so great. At first you swallow at the expense but they last forever. You just have to make sure to never ever let them touch acrylic colors because that'll ruin them right away.

[sami]

I haven't found acrylics ruin my brushes, but it may be the specific acrylics I use; Windsor and Newton's, which are compounded differently from pretty much all the others. Also I wash them out *immediately*. (In part because the acrylics I use dry very quickly and I hate hate hate removing dried paint from brushes.) A cup of water when I'm painting to rinse them mostly out and keep them wet immediately I'm done with the paint, and a thorough wash with brush soap when I'm done painting.

I use a mix of expensive and cheap brushes, though. Like, my broad brushes for painting large areas and messing around with large textures are the cheapest brushes available, because then I can hideously abuse them without too much financial pain. (Having them in stock has turned out to be spectacularly useful especially when my housemate needed assistance with a project that ended up involving using brushes to paint with spray-paint paint, which, I have to tell you, was entirely terminal for the brushes involved.)

I also often like painting with watercolours over acrylic, because you can do interesting things with textures that you can't really do straight on paper.

[astridv]

Yeah, I use cheaper brushes for larger areas too. Large marten brushes are ridiculously expensive.

I haven't found acrylics ruin my brushes, but it may be the specific acrylics I use; Windsor and Newton's, which are compounded differently from pretty much all the others.

Huh, interesting. But the W&Ns aren't water-soluble, are they?

[sami]

They are when still wet? I'm not sure I'd use water as a medium for them, necessarily. I think you *can* but I prefer a slicker texture even if I'm just going for a sort of glaze level of colour.

I once painted a wood texture that was so good my father made a sarcastic sort of comment praising the wood texture... because he thought the painting was painted *on wood* and the wood was just original and natural.

I'd applied the texture itself using pretty much straight-from-the-tube titanium white, and then a rather dilute brown washed over it so that the texture underneath collected more or less for darker/lighter patterning, and... yeah, it looks like wood. The slightly thicker-than-water medium works better for that kind of thing, I think.

But if you put a brush covered in W&N acrylic in a cup of water and shake it around, most of the paint does come off into the water.

[kerravonsen]

Oooh, pretty!

Suggestion for #3: Fishies! And at the bottom, tentacles from a deep-sea cephalopod.

Suggestion for #2: Mermaid.

Suggestion for #1: It reminds me of ripples on the shore. So, oceanscape, with clouds.

Suggestion for #4: A fire creature that lives inside the sun.

[alias_sqbr]

2: More of a merMAN :)
4: This was a very inspiring prompt, thanks!

[kerravonsen]

A technological merman!

Oh, that fire creature is awesome!

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks!

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, I forgot to say: number 3, as well!

[kerravonsen]

Cool!

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks!

[shehasathree]

ooh, so pretty!

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks!

[sami]

omg I am reading my reading list and OH LOOK MY FAVOURITE SUBJECTS

I don't know about more detail for prompts, but I can tell you that the first one makes me think water, the second and third sky, and the fourth one fire or sunset.

If, by the way, you decide you want to experiment with some other non-digital media, I can *make recommendations oh my yes I can*.

(*cough* e.g. IMO the best pencils are Staedtler Mars Lumographs. Putty rubbers are INFINITELY better than standard ones, because you can erase with precision and they don't abrade the paper. If you want to experiment with acrylics, Windsor and Newton's are very, very good and have the excellent quality that they dry out the same colour as they are wet, but some painters don't like them because they dry out very quickly unless you use a slow-drying medium or suchlike. The difference between "titanium white" and "mixing white" seems arbitrary but is actually vital: mixing white is for lightening colours but keeping them vibrant, mixing with titanium white gives you pastels.)

(But don't get Windsor and Newton putty rubbers. It pains me to say it, as I am a descendant of the Newtons in Windsor and Newton, but their putty rubbers when I tried them were *rock hard*, which isn't helpful. I think the putty rubber I've been using for about the last two years is the General's Gum Eraser from Jackson's, but I can't guarantee it.)

(Also, it's worth noting that Jackson's has an excellent range in its online store and, as of last time I ordered, free and quite prompt delivery.)

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks for the recs! I got all this stuff from Jackson's but it didn't occur to me to get delivery!

[sami]

It's not the kind of thing you think of for a shop *in your city*, is it? And yet. So awesome.

I'm getting all excited about art again, so thanks for that. I even have a painting Project today. I dug out all my tubes of acrylic from my (dusty!!) box of paint stuff, I'm getting all my brushes together...

By the way, an important recommendation: When painting with watercolours, if you're mixing a nice colour, mix it on something where you can keep it for later, and mix more than you think you need. Because watercolours dry out and then you can wet them again and use them later, but trying to re-mix an exact shade if you find you need slightly more than you thought you did is *incredibly annoying*.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes I am slowly learning that! I really like how it's not a big deal if the paints dry out, that's really annoying with acrylics (that and how SLOW they are to dry on the canvas. Digital art has made me impatient :))

[fred_mouse]

I agree with the person upthread who went with mermaids, because I thought that, and sea monsters too. But then my fannish brain kicked in, and I wondered about using them for Avatar/the last airbender images.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh now that's an intresting idea. HMMMmmmm.

[pebblerocker]

1. a flying thing - animal or mechanical
2. alien botanical illustration!

[alias_sqbr]

2: It went in an unexpected direction :)

[pebblerocker]

Not familiar with the character, but I love it! Underwater tech, beautiful - and he has great scales.

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks! He looks like this in canon, and is Don Cheadle underneath :)