I'm often asked how I create the textures that I use in my illustrations. My current illustration technique is a mostly digital evolution of a painting style that I first developed while attending the Savannah College of Art and Design in the early nineties. In the original painting incarnation, I used tape to mask off each section, then covered it with a mixture of gesso and modeling paste. While this mixture was still wet, I used a variety of tools to add the texture.
Pouring out the mixture- in this case straight gesso.
Using a palette knife to spread the gesso out.
Creating the texture with a sponge.
Finished texture ready to dry and paint.
I create some of the textures with a sponge as shown above. I also use paint brushes, palette knives, a variety of styluses, even cling wrap! I also bring in collage elements such as found paper and fabric. To add color and accentuate the texture patterns I would work paint in to the recesses of the textured surface and wipe it off the high points for contrast. Below is one of my illustrations marked up with the technique used on each section.
Waiting on each section to dry before I could work on the next meant that it often took several days to complete an illustration project. That's the biggest reason behind the switch to digital. I still create most of the textures in exactly the same way, but each is done on it's own illustration board instead of the complicated tape-masking technique necessary to get them all on one board. This allows me to work on all the gesso textures at once instead of needing to wait for each one to dry before going on to the next. Each individual board is then scanned and dropped into a masked Adobe Photoshop layer for the section.
Read more about my sketch technique...