Friday, June 22, 2007

Using Texture Paste - an Acrylic Painting Technique







Use texture paste to add extra interest to your pictures.



Impasto Pictures

For impasto pictures it can be very cost effective to use texture paste rather than huge amounts of acrylic paint.

Texture paste is a white product. While you can add colour to the texture paste to colour it, a better way is to apply the white paste to the picture, let it dry and then add the colour over the dried paste. This technique uses a lot less colour too.

You would need to use a lot of paint to achieve a dark colour of texture paste!

Not Just Impasto Pictures

However, you can use texture paste in ‘normal’ paintings as well. I like to use it for things in the foreground and help to give more depth to the picture.

In the photos you can see where texture paste has been used in quite a subtle technique. I could have used straight paint for a similar result, but I find that using a palette knife and taking the paste from its jar–like container a lot easier. I think it gives a better result as well.

In this example I used the paste to add texture to different sections of the front edge of the stone pillar. This particular picture is painted using the acrylics in a watercolour style, but because I’m using acrylics it is possible to add this extra quality to the picture.

(This painting is “The Old Man of Hoy in the Sea Mist”. This stone stack is found in the Orkney Islands at the far north of the UK.)

Other Ideas

You could use this technique for bushes in the front of your landscape pictures. It is handy for stony foregrounds too.

Top Tip - When you paint over the dried paste add darker colours to the hollows to give added depth. A good effect for the minimum effort ;-)

This is a great technique for adding interest to your pictures.

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