The objective of this project was to create four illustrations of four different surfaces and textures from nature or man-made materials and to construct such realistic surfaces that it would be difficult to tell that they were created using artist materials.
I captured a variety of textures and did thumbnails for the ones that I found the most interesting. I finally settled on pottery, wood, cotton, and lemons for my final illustrations. I explored and used a variety of mediums in order to recreate the most realistic texture at my current skill level. I explored the effectiveness of each medium by exploring them at the roughs stage (included) and to determine which mediums would be most effective for each illustration.
Initial Texture Research. I captured a variety of interesting textures that would be fun to recreate.
Initial Texture Research. I captured a variety of interesting textures that would be fun to recreate.
Some more textures.
I chose this piece of pottery as one of my final four because of the interesting texture and beautiful colour.
I traced the picture of the pottery so that I could transfer the drawing to watercolour paper.
Next, I transferred the drawing to watercolour paper.
In terms of mediums, I used dark brown oil pastels to create resistance and painted over them with turquoise water colour. This allowed the brown oil pastels to peek through the turquoise paint. I painted in a way that the colour would look more weathered and to allow for the different values of turquoise present in the pottery. For the details such as the cut out shapes and indentations, I used dark brown and black Copic markers. I also used iridescent copper acrylic paint.
This is the final rendering. I believe that the combination of mediums that I used together allowed me to achieve a believable texture.
This towel was chosen for it’s variety of vibrant colours as well as the chance to explore another unique texture.
For the base, I initially explored markers during the experimentation stage and was not satisfied with the effect as it was too flat and intense. I then moved on to water colours and found them unsatisfactory because the colours bled into each other. I finally tested gouache and was very happy with the result as it gave me the opacity and vibrancy that i was looking for. I rendered the thread details over the gouache using colour pencils, water colour pencils, as well as fine black markers.
My final rendering of the coloured cotton towel. I was very happy with this one.
The third illustration is of an old carved wooden chest. I chose this because of the beautiful wood carvings that are old and weathered. Due to its age, the wood texture on this chest was a bit different than other carved boxes I have (i.e the carvings are less shiny and flatter).
Testing out various mediums for the carved wooden box.
The base of the illustration was created with a light grey-brown gouache.
The carvings were rendered with colouring pencils in shades of browns and rusts. Highlights were created used white gouache and shadows and depth with dark brown and black colouring pencils.
This final illustration of lemons was chosen to allow me to simulate the texture of something edible. I was initially wary of trying to simulate the inner part of the lemon and was going to render only the outside but decided it would be more of a challenge and learning experience to do both.
I tested various types of paint including watercolour, acrylic, and gouache at this stage.
The base of the lemon was created using yellow and white acrylic paints. I then created shadows and values using mustard gouache. I created the values in the inner half of the lemon using the same mustard gouache as well as white acrylic paint. The highlights and shadows on the outer half of the lemon were created using white acrylic as well as colouring pencils (peach, orange, and dark brown).
These are my final four illustrations. I made my illustrations larger and cut out a 3 x 3 section of each to paste on the illustration board. I found this project quite challenging but I also learned the most from it - experimenting with different mediums to figure out which effect each would allow for was an enjoyable learning experience for me.
