Texture, the element of art that stimulates sight and touch

The texture is the element of art that refers to the way things look or feel. It is the character of a surface and can be both tactile and visual. Texture stimulates two different senses: sight and touch.

 
Types of texture:

• Tactile or real texture: is the physical quality of a surface, such as rough, smooth, sticky, fuzzy, soft or slick. A real texture is one you can actually feel with your hand, such as a tree trunk, sandpaper, brick, animal fur, etc.

• Visual or Implied texture is the visual quality of a surface. Visual or implied texture can be simulated or invented. The simulated texture is the type of composition that is created to look like something it is not. Visual texture is an illusion of texture created by an artist. For example, Paint can be manipulated to give the impression of texture, while the paper surface remains smooth and flat.

Incorporating texture into the creative process adds another dimension. Painters use different mediums, paint strokes, and surface treatments to create the illusion of texture. 

In textiles, texture starts with fabric selection. When selecting fabric, you consider the weave of the material, whether it be tightly woven to reflect the light or a courser weave like burlap.

With the development of technology, the photographic image now has a role in our textile pieces. The ability to print images onto lengths of fabric means the print on the material also plays a vital role in adding textural interest to our works. Learning to apply digital images to fabric was a pivotal moment in my practice.

Additional levels of texture can be added through the use of hand stitching, thread thickness, quilting, trapunto, beads, buttons, acrylic mediums, puff paint, Tyvek, fabric burning, adding ribbon, lace, applique, and fabric manipulation through pleating, folding, seam construction etc... 

Texture, along with the line, shape, form, colour, space and value are known as the elements of art, the essential design ingredients.

The elements of art help the artist to:

• create visual interest or a focal point
• to create contrast within a design
• to help visually balance a design

Artist across the mediums draw on these elements to create interest or contrast in their works. Sometimes these elements work together and other times the stand alone.

Everywhere, every day we are surrounded by natural and artificial texture. As you gather and collect inspiration keep an eye out for texture. Use a combination of words, sketch and digital image to obtain ideas. Many photographers use macro photography to capture the feel of a subject. Macro mode enables you to get in close, examine the detail and crop the scene. Interested in exploring macro photography further here are a couple of useful articles.

How To Create Your Own Unique Textures and Apply Them To Your Photography by John Davenport

How To Take Amazing Smartphone Macro Photos by Max Therry

The random smoothness and roughness of texture are what draws us in to touch and get a closer look. In addition to photography and sketching, you can use rubbing to capture the character of the texture. In school, you probably placed a piece of paper over the surface, and with a B pencil or charcoal, you lightly rubbed to reveal the pattern. 

This same exercise can be done by laying a piece of fabric across the texture and using a Shiva Oil Paintstik or similar fabric crayon rub across the texture.

1. Prewash the fabric to remove any sizing.
2. Place the textured surface under your fabric.
3. Tape your fabric in place to prevent it from shifting too much.
4. Oil paint sticks are self-sealing, using a piece of paper towel gently remove the film.
5. Lightly rub the paintstik across the fabric, an image of the textured item under the material will appear. 
6. After applying the colour, allow the painted fabric to dry 3-5 days, then heat-set to make the colours permanent.
7. Place a piece of baking paper on the surface of your ironing board, then a bit of old muslin (an old tea towel works well too) and set your iron to the proper setting for the painted fabric, e.g. cotton setting for cotton fabric etc.
8. Put the painted fabric paint-side down on the muslin (or tea towel) and press for 10-15 seconds in each painted spot.

Once the paintstik rubbing has been heat-set, it is colourfast, washable & dry cleanable. Not only have you captured the texture but you are have also created a unique piece of fabric. 

One of the great things about texture is that you can find it everywhere. The more you look, the more you'll discover, you can also make your own texture. Observe your surrounds and enjoy some creative playtime while building your texture library.

Related Posts:

Six Ways to Find & Collect Inspiration

Fabric Inspired by Crushed Paper
 
Pine Tree bark, a natural texture

How a Mundane Task Turned in to a Creative Day Out?

A Creative Day in the Country

adding a few words

The images are gathered and either printed or glue transferred onto cotton fabrics and now I'm wanting to incorporate a few words into my current work in progress. Normally my approach to adding text to my textile pieces would be through stitch or running the stabilized fabric through my ink jet printer both methods work well and both reliable. For this project I'm working towards having the words with different vibrancy thus adding depth to the final piece.

So I've been playing with various pens, pencils, paints etc and sampling how they mark fabric. When I'm sampling, experimenting, seeing how things work I work quickly and onto materials that I'm not precious about this enables my mind to work freely. As I'm working I make notes documenting my thoughts, findings and any side ideas that spring to mind.

 For my current work in progress I'm leaning towards using pencil to add the text, I'm liking the color density of the pencil on the fabric.

weekend retreat and fabric discharging

Last weekend was a long weekend for us and I escaped out to Boonah for a 3 day art & quilt retreat - how wonderful. I seized the opportunity to finish off a couple of projects and also to start working on a couple more pieces for my upcoming exhibition - Sunday Drives. My husband and I frequently head out to the Boonah area to explore the National Park areas out there, on one of our trips I had taken photos of Australian Grass Trees. Prior to retreat I had printed a few of these images onto fabric and wanted to explore further the idea of combining the images with black fabrics that have been discharged. So last weekend I had a wonderful time achieving different patterns on several pieces of black fabric by firstly scrunching, stitching, folding or clumping (or a combination of) and then popping these pieces into diluted bleach to discharge the color. The above are a couple of the discharged pieces.And these are a couple of the images I've captured on our day trips

product play - tumble dyes

A few weeks ago I purchased some Tumble Dyes and a couple of stencils from Susan Pietsch of  Essential Textile Art while at the ATASDA social day. It was a really nice day we met up at Mount Tamborine in the Gold Coast Hinterland area. We enjoyed a couple of demonstrations and lots of wonderful show n tell by members as part of the show case table. I've been exploring how the dyes work

the dyes come in spray bottles the instructions on the back of the bottles are very clear

But you basically just pick your color, shake the bottle first and then start spraying  

 and of course I went over board with the first piece and used every color and stencil purchased

and didn't allow drying time between overlapping the colors so it became a little murky - but I had a ton of fun creating it. And then I became a bit more focused

using a tree stencil and the carbon colored dye I sprayed the first tree, 

lifted the stencil covered the area with a piece of paper and then sprayed the next tree

using the tree stencil again and laying it onto a piece of light weight Lutradur I sprayed the piece using the carbon colored dye. When the piece was dry I've laid it over a couple of my digital images of our macadamia nut tree that I've printed onto fabric

 This time when I was cleaning up I had a few squares of cotton fabric which I slightly pressed to the top side of the stencils before lifting everything off. I quite like the softer image that results. 

 I've enjoyed using the Tumble Dyes and envisage using them again. 

Susan has a couple of examples of how she's used the Tumble dyes on her blog.

piece by piece

A few of the leftover strips from a quilt top I started recently using some of my Spoonflower fabrics

placing the leftover strips onto a piece of steam a seam

even decided to do something with the tiny tiny pieces

 I enjoyed pottering along with this, certainly wasn't a quick process but enjoyed remembering where I had taken each of the photos that is featured on the fabrics. These pieces will now be incorporated into a bigger piece.

rubbing texture

We the Broadstrokes had a wonderful time on Saturday rubbing our way around Cleveland with our honorary member - Sue Dennis. Cleveland is a bay-side town in the Redlands district and our wonderful Kate had visited the area during the week to scope it out for textures. So armed with fabrics and oil sticks we went on a rubbing adventure around Cleveland and Raby Bay.

finished heat-setting the pieces this morning

Inspired by

Finished putting the final touches onto my little bag tonight. I'm part of a small group and we meet every 6 weeks or so and enjoy sharing ideas and setting ourselves little challenges to expand and grow. On this particular occasion we went along to the Queensland Art Gallery and picked one of the exhibitions that was on at the time which happened to be Paper Skin - Barkcloth from across the Pacific. 

The mission was to draw inspiration from a current exhibition

We made lots of notes and then explored and expanded from there. Initially I explored on paper and into my visual diary. I finally drew a pattern directly onto freezer paper and then cut out sections to create a stencil. Ironed the stencil onto cotton fabric and then using a stencil brush and Artists Paintstiks I stenciled the fabric, repositioning the stencil several times. Once I had finished, I allowed the fabric to rest for 24 hours before heat setting it. The fabric stayed that way for a few months and just recently I finally drafted up the pattern for the bag and assembled it. I've used upholstery fabric for the handles and base and hand dyed cotton fabric for the interior.  

fun with the sun

 Sunday last week was hot, sunny and humid but a great day to have a bit of fun with painting fabric and doing some sun printing. I've used transparent paints by Hi-Strike and Pebeo Setacolor . I've also mixed through a couple of metallic fabric paints. I first learnt how to do this technique in a workshop with quilt artist Gloria Loughman and really enjoy returning to the technique.

The fabric used was white homespun and pre-washed. Damp pieces of the fabric were laid out onto my work surface. I then paint the fabric pieces with paints which I had diluted. Once the pieces were painted I laid the macadamia leaves across the top of the painted pieces. Everything is left in the sun to dry, the leaves act as a resist. It's fun to play around with different shapes laid across the top to get different effects.

product play - ink aid

When I'm putting together my art quilts I often incorporate photos I've taken or images of scanned drawings into the layouts. I use a few different methods to transfer the images onto fabric and each method has it's positives and negatives and alters the handle of the fabric differently. I'm using an ink jet printer so the fabrics need to be prepared which enables them to firstly run through the printer and secondly hold the ink. For my current project I'm using a product called "Ink Aid(TM)-White Matt Precoat" to prepare the fabrics.

I particularly like using Ink Aid when I'm wanting to print onto colored fabric or do mono-printing over the top of the images once they have been printed. I've found that the handle of the fabric becomes stiffer but is still very easy to sew through. The instructions on the bottle are very clear and easy to follow. Following the instructions and doing a couple of sample pieces is always a good place to start and then play and explore from there.

The Lantern has been printed onto a patterned black (quilting weight) fabric with the second coat of Ink Aid(TM) not being applied evenly, I wanted some of the the fabric pattern to show through and the image not to be so clear/precise. The flowers down the side of the Lantern have been printed onto white homespun which had been prepared with 2 coats of the Ink Aid(TM). The Dandelion flower has been printed onto light blue cotton poplin which was prepared with two coats of Ink Aid(TM). All prepared pieces were then cut to A4 size and stabilized with freezer paper before running through the printer.

Hidden Patterns

The weekend seems so far away, and what a wonderful weekend it was. Filled with catching up with friends and fellow artists and enjoying some yummy food and conversations. Tricia Smout, Felicity Clarke and I are having a collaborative exhibition, and over breakfast, we decided upon a name. The title of our show will be "Undercurrents" at the Arts Factory, South Brisbane in September. It's getting exhilarating now that we have decided on a name. Time to get a harry on making my pieces for the exhibition.

Following breakfast, I went onto lunch and met up with the founding committee members of 2QAQ our 3-year term came to an end in September last year, we decided to have our final catchup in the new year so we could hear all the wonderful travel stories a couple of members had. We also wanted a little time to prepare one last surprise for our leader Sue Dennis who has been instrumental in getting 2QAQ up and running as well as starting the annual SOTA (State of the Art) juried art quilt exhibition for Queensland Quilt members to enter. We the secretive eight decorated/embellished a mini canvass each with the colour orange (Sue's favourite colour) being the common thread and presented them to Sue. Connect through to Sue's blog to see the mini canvasses.

I've also been experimenting further with printing and stamping using a banana trunk. We trimmed out some of the suckers, that way the main trunk has more chance of producing fruit. I noticed that the interior of the trunk has an interesting spiral pattern. So off I went firstly for the camera to take a few photos, and then I wondered if the pattern would print; time for creative play and discovery. So far, I've mostly printed onto paper and have a couple of fabric pieces ready to print as well. I've used acrylic paint and applied it to the banana trunk with a sponge brush and pressed it onto the paper/fabric.

Related Post:

Texture the element of art that stimulate sight and touch 

Banana Blossom Coleslaw

Rusty Fabric

Over the weekend I started working on my submission for the annual juried Art Quilt Exhibition through 2QAQ  the entries are due beginning of February. While I was searching through my fabric stash and auditioning fabrics for the submission piece I came across the above two pieces of fabric that I have dyed  using rusty objects. I really enjoyed doing the above pieces and plan to dye a couple more and make up a quilt with them. Both pieces are using cotton fabric. The piece on the left had been getting used as a rag cleaning up acrylic paint, the rag was hand rinsed and then popped through the wash which removed most of the paint but left some behind which has added a little bit of interest and depth to the background.

The Rust Fabric Dying Recipe 

Natural Fibre (for me this is usually 100% cotton fabric), white vinegar and rusty objects.

Take one or several rusty items and wrap/sandwich the item into the chosen natural fibre. Place the wrapped item into a seal-able plastic bag and pour enough vinegar over until the item is completely covered. Seal the bag and place in the sun for a minimum of 48 hours (I usually loose track of time and they end up being in the sun for 1 or 2 weeks). Unwrap the fabric, remove the rusty items and rinse out the fabric, soak in a salted water solution for an hour or so and then rinse the fabric again.