Enhance Texture in Acrylics: 7 Tips Without Extra Mediums

1. Introduction: Hello, I'm Malcolm Dewey. And in this mini series of painting tips. I'm going to be bringing you sort of bite size actionable painting tips in acrylics and Gach. Hopefully, this will become a series that I can add to over the coming months, and you're going to get something that you can immediately apply to your painting. So let's keep this short and get straight into it with this mini sized painting lesson all about getting more texture in acrylics. I'm going to give you seven great tips and show them with a little painting demonstration as well. You get the reference, download the reference, try it out for yourself, and you'll be able to get an immediate change and benefit to your acrylic paintings. All right, if that sounds good, let's jump in and find out more about getting more texture into your acrylic painting. 2. Acrylic Textures Demonstration: Here's the attractive reference that I'm going to work with, creating something vibrant. I'm using regular acrylic paints. These are Amsterdam Acrylics and a couple of Windsor Newton Galeria acrylics, basic palette of warm and cool primaries and a few convenience colors like Burn Siena and yellow Ocha it. You can do anything you want for a palette like this. Long flat brushes, for the most part, and a filbert, and then a panel, prime panel, quite simple. First tip is tone the panel, that toning is going to help with texture. Some of it's going to show through, and you've already got a layer of paint down even before you've actually started the main event. I find the toning can sometimes have a very important influence on the overall harmony of the paints that go over it. I'm going to just use some tissue and remove some paint where the lights light is, and also suggest the foreground and where the buildings are going to go. But for the rest, I'll now let this dry, doesn't take too long with acrylics, and then we can start the painting. I've done a bit of loose composing with a rigger brush, just getting the ideas going and getting the flow of thoughts, leaving a few things out, emphasizing a few others. And I just figuring out where I'm going to be doing some of the texturing as well, especially in the foreground. Clean all of that off from the palette. A clean palette results in clean color notes, so that's important. Go to start with the sky and work down. For the sky, bringing in some white paint at this stage. The second texture tip I can give you is create a sort of blending gradation, and that creates a texture as well. Texture doesn't necessarily have to be thick paint. In this case, we're creating a warm just above the ridge line of the hill, and then a bit cooler as we go to the top, and this creates depth, a sense of the sky moving up and away, creating more depth in the scene. A few suggested wisps of clouds to add a little extra texture and interest to the sky. Now the background hill will also be dealt with quite lightly with a bit of desaturated and cool down yellow ocher. I have raised that hill, as you can tell from the reference as a backdrop, and also to make sure that the roofs of the houses don't intersect with the ridge of the hill as in the reference, and that creates a bit of tension. And the other tip can give you try to keep the white paint out for as long as possible. Aside from the sky, when I get into the main event, there is a little white. No dabbing strokes with the brush is the third tip that I can give for texture, and this is quite a common technique. You'll use it a lot, especially painting in an impressionist style. Now, I do mention this because a lot of beginners paint large flat surfaces. Instead, work with short dabbing strokes, build up your colors that way and you'll get broken color as well. You're not painting between the lines like in a coloring book with a lot of flat or. You'll see how I move the brush around, back and forth up and down, chopping and dabbing color. Even in this first blocking in layer, we're getting texture. In fact, we have two layers of paint now, the toning layer and this layer on top. You can see without white paint in this blocking in layer, the yellows are vibrant, they working with the red undertone. Variety. That's just another little tip. I can give you a variety of shapes and color temperatures. Further back in this middle distance, the color temperature is actually cooler. There's a little bit of white coming into the paint and white, especially Titanium white cools paint down dramatically and acrylics more even with oils. You can see all of that texture, and we haven't even got into thicker paint. Now, let's just block in a few of the buildings, shadow and light colors. Shadows a grayish violet. Then the lights, just a desaturated yellow ocher and white. This also helps to make sure that the buildings do recede a little as well. The orange colors are also desaturated slightly with a bit of white paint. The color will be in the foreground. So just keep that in mind. You don't want to put your warmest colors in the background in a painting like this. That will just reduce the amount of space you create. Continuing with the blocking in. The roof color in the focal area here is a little brighter, a little more vibrant and saturated. And already were starting to layer the color now and that creates texture as well. Still very th, but nevertheless, as soon as you start layering slightly thicker paint, as we're going to do here with this cross hatching technique. Now that's basically your no cross hatching from drawing overlapping brush strokes, especially verticals and horizontals, as you can see, creating different shapes, some overlapping with the others, and that creates a lot of texture. So texture is not simply thick paint, but also the perception of things going on because of the broken color effects you create. A few sky holes in the trees gives you a glimpse of the hill behind, and that creates a sense of space. Keep that in mind, so nothing is too cstrophobic in your painting. Now, we're into the second layer as such and creating thicker paint. Now we start mixing the paint, a bit more white paint in it, so it gets a little more opaque. And these impasto strokes. Impasto is very important. That's number six for texture. Empesto just means thicker paint, slightly more pasty, perhaps, but colorful, warm, for the roof, we generally like to have empasto in areas where there is strong light. I just suggesting a bit of the woodwork, some of the tiles, bit of light illuminating the edge of the barn. Now this thicker paint goes on and it creates a lot more vibrancy straightaway, adjusting the shadow side for a more vibrant and colorful violet colors. Violet and blue shadows will work nicely against all the warm orange and yellow in the painting. When I add white to make a color more opaque in acrylics, I like to try to add more color into that white. It doesn't end up being too, too chalky. Empato textures on that roof as well, and so on. And we just work through the painting in a sort of methodical fashion. Empasto highlights on the tree. It's starting to come together. We'll also get the textures on the big tree on the left. Faring the brush strokes, small and large, that adds variety and interest to your texture. On the light side of the tree, some dappled light coming through with the warm burn sienna on the shadow side, some of that blue violet, creating a nice counterpoint for contrast. Dry brushing, one of my favorite texture strokes, also called scumbling and that's just dragging thick paint thick with no water in it and dragging that over the dry underlayer. Paint tries quite quickly with acrylic, so you can get into this technique pretty quickly as you paint, a little bit of that in the background, but you can see how the middle ground now looks like light hitting grass. And then you go back into that with a couple of smaller strokes using the corner of the brush, breaking up shapes, adding little bits of added interest, just suggesting things going on in the shadows and breaking up obvious edges. And your painting naturally just gets more interesting and texture filled as a result. Moving closer to the foreground now, you start getting slightly bigger strokes, but more paint. The paint also starts getting warmer. As you approach the foreground. But always a variety, slightly warm, slightly cool. These little temperature variations also suggest different textures. When one looks at different temperature color strokes, you perceive texture like you would looking at a grassland in real life. There's highlights and dark accents. The little strokes of dark burn sienna amongst the lights, suggesting a bit of ground showing through or some mud, perhaps. All of these things create a more interesting and natural looking surface. Color, bigger strokes in the foreground, and to watch the variety of brush strokes going down. Cross hatching back and forth, up and down. You don't need texture mediums. You don't need to add anything to your paint. This is ordinary student acrylics and you can get so much out of it. Touches of green for cool notes amongst the warm notes. Into the foreground shadow that I'm going to bring in to give us a step into the painting. There's little temperature shifts in the shadows as well. Shadows are colorful, but they must remain a shadow. That's important. There's our painting filled with texture, vibrant color, interesting shapes. And from this point on, you can start adding details. I'm going to add in some fence posts. Here's just a little bit of dappled light. A few little accent notes there of reddish burns una. Fence post going in. Let's put in a figure as well to just help the focal area stand out a bit, and that will be the painting done. I think you can agree. It's got texture, it's got strong vibrant color. Just the sort of thing you want with acrylic paints. Simple, but vibrant and colorful. So try these seven painting techniques for texture in your acrylic painting, and I'm sure you'll see a difference straight away. So let's sign that off and we'll have a final look at the painting. And I hope you enjoy having a go with your own acrylic painting. 3. Conclusion: Well, I hope this little demonstration and lesson has given you something you can take into your painting straightaway. Good action tips, and it's all about practicing them and making a change to your acritic painting. Let me know in the comments if you enjoyed this type of format, and then I can bring you more short form bite size painting tips like this one. Get the reference photo and try it out for yourself. Add the project to your class, and I hope to see that soon as well. And finally, please don't forget to review this lesson if you enjoyed it, and it was helpful to you. Leave a review. It helps other people as well. Well, thank you very much, and we'll see you soon in the next painting lesson.