Playing with texture

Now that CHI (a Human Computer Interaction Conference, which was good but took up 100% or more of my time last week) is over, I can finally return to art. First of all, here are a few photos of stuff I did the week before. I experimented a bit with texture, something I am very interested in (think of painting on burlap etc.).

This time I picked up an old trick to texture a painting surface that I learned from my mom: use tissue paper + acrylic binder (or acylic medium if you so choose) to create a textured surface. Let it dry and then paint on that. Another possibility is to use modeling pastes of which there are many different ones to be found in the art supply stores. I do prefer the texture you get from the tissue paper, though. Yet another possibility is to make your own modeling paste, using acrylic binder and marble dust. Or you can mix some sand into gesso. Or, or, or. Obviously, there are many possibilities.

So these two pieces here are made with the tissue paper trick (above) and both the marble dust in acrylic binder as well as light modeling paste in the lower one. I think both of these are not really finished yet, so I might post updates on them some time. Sorry that they are a bit out of focus...