Creating Texture with Paint - part 1 (spray paint, ramen noodles, sunprinting w/paint, pounded fabric)

And we're back!!

For the purposes of this week, all types of paint and paint stuff are in the mix.....acrylics, paint sticks, SetAColor, metallics, screen  printing ink, etc.  I'm so excited to see what you guys come up with to use paint for in creating texture.  Using paint will usually be for perceived texture, although, I've seen it applied so that you can actually feel the texture of it...like when mixed with sand! I've even used a spray paint (not originally meant for fabric...but when does that stop us?) that has the feel of sand. Even now on one of my projects, I'm using acrylic interior house paint.

So, let's get started because there seems to be a bottomless well for creativity on this topic!

Just to get the ball rolling, here is a piece I did using that spray sand paint. I sprayed my hand dyed fabric with the sand paint, then stitched it easily. This fabric I used for the "sand" background. It is actually rough to the touch. So....it IS possible to sew through this stuff.  This piece is inspired by the story of David and Goliath. The title is:

Five Smooth Stones

Kelly L Hendrickson

Here is a close-up of the spray painted fabric

Many of you were here during June when Lynda did all that wonderful sunprinting. New thing for me -- sunprinting with regular acrylic and other paints!!! Here is a photo of a piece I did on raw silk which had previously been sunprinted (a couple of years ago) with SetAColor. I used a Jacquard purple metallic watered down a bit. In this photo you will see (at the bottom left) the previously sunprinted fabric and the beautiful vertical texture created by the sunprint this summer with the Jacquard paint.

Thanks, Lynda!! This fabric is for a piece I hope to get done in the next month or so. If you want to see the final outcome....it will eventually be posted on my art blog:  

And just to show that you don't need a paint brush to paint...here is a piece of whole cloth I did this summer inspired by the title of a book by one of my favorite authors -- "Cat Among the Pigeons" by Agatha Christie.

It was made with a painted block of Ramen Noodles!!  I used several shades of green acrylic/metallic paint and in the center a purple metallic acrylic.

Another technique to add texture with paint is known as Pounded Fabric. Here is a piece I did earlier and I LOVE the texture of this one. If you are interested in this technique, I did a 3-day tutorial here on FIRE recently. Just look for "pounded fabric" under the labels in the right sidebar.

I used paint often in my series entitled "Up Close and Personal" where I took some of my favorite macro photos and re-did them into art quilts. Here is one of those - the original photo (L) and the art quilt beside it (R). The grating at the bottom is silver mesh Christmas ribbon painted gray. I used the same gray acrylic to create the weathering. A white Shiva paint stick created the long-ago layer of white paint on the door.  (Just an extra bit of info - the red part of the door was made from a piece of breakdown printing I had done years before. See....texture using dye!)

I hope this has been enough to get your creative juices going!! Tomorrow I'll be sharing a piece or two from one of our guest artists, Ann Scott. She has a fun tutorial to share with you!

As always, please feel free to e-mail me your own examples - this week of texture created by paint. My e-mail is:

Kelly@KellyLHendrickson

Until tomorrow then....sweet textural dreams!!