DESIGN INDUSTRY NEWS

It’s all good and well to run at top speed in an ever increasing attempt at doing as much as possible for our clients but often what we don’t do is explain how we achieve certain effects that blur the line between hand made and digital.

The following tutorial describes how some of these effects are achieved. We are posting this so that clients can have a better understanding of the process involved in creating unique art and visuals that communicate your message with feeling.

Using Illustrator and Photoshop techniques to achieve painterly effects is quick and easy, but when you make textures out of real paint you can achieve an authentic look & feel that you just don’t get when you do everything digitally. And a benefit to working with real paint is the ‘happy accidents’ that show up along the way. Plus it’s fun to step away from the computer and get your hands dirty every now & then, right?

There’s probably a zillion ways to make your own textures. This tutorial will just show you one easy way, but don’t let that stop you from experimenting! Try out different paints, surfaces, and mediums. Find something that works for you. The possibilities are endless.

1. Plan it out

For this tutorial we’re going to be painting with black acrylic paint on masonite boards with an acrylic Gesso base. You’ll also want an assortment of brushes to achieve various effects in your painted textures.

It’s a huge help to plan out your textures beforehand. Are you going to make a series of background splats? Or a specific shape for a future illustration? Knowing what you need will take away some of the guesswork later, and you’ll make the most out of your efforts.

2. Make your base

Get some Gesso on your board. Use a brush and spread it around. Choose a brush that will allow you to achieve the sort of texture you want. Stiff and coarse brushes will give a deep scratchy texture effect, while smooth brushes lend themselves to slight and subtle texture. The shape of the liquid Gesso as it dries will determine the texture that shows through later, so get close and take a good look at the Gesso surface before you decide it’s ready to dry. You can even put more Gesso on after it’s dry, to achieve a multi-layered texture.

3. Paint it

For paint, we’re using black acrylic paint to achieve maximum contrast on our painting surface. When we scan the painting later we’ll want to have a clear distinction between the white of your board and the black of your painted objects.

There’s no rules to applying the paint. You can use various brushes and apply the paint either wet or dry. With your brushes you can splat and smudge it around, scrape and smear, anything that will get lots of texture to show through. But you can also apply the paint in other ways. Try using a sponge or piece of cardboard and see what sort of effects you can achieve. The only thing you need to keep in mind is that you want lots of high contrast texture around the edges of your shapes.

4. Scan your painting

When scanning, it’s a good idea to keep it in greyscale and adjust the brightness and contrast so that your whites are white, and your blacks are black. Later on you can adjust the levels to minimize the amount of grey on your canvas in Photoshop.

The resolution you scan at is important. When you trace your texture the scanned resolution will determine the amount of detail in your vector textures. Scans with very high resolution will have very high detail levels, which can be a bad thing in vectors because your textures may have lots of unnecessary points and shapes. Generally keeping your scanned objects at a resolution of about 2000x2000 should give you enough detail to achieve lots of texture while being efficient.

5. Trace your scan

Bring your scan into Illustrator, and pull up the Live Trace “Tracing Options” screen. From here you can adjust the “threshold” slider to decide how bold your textures will be. You should also keep the “Path Fitting” as low as possible, and keep your “Minimum Area” low as well. This will allow you to get lots of detail in your textured objects. Just watch the “Paths” info section and keep this number as low as possible, and adjust the options to make it look the way you want. I find that settings like the screenshot below are just perfect for a scan this size.

Once you’re happy with your settings, click “Trace”. Then “Expand” your traced object and group your new traced textures into individual objects.

6. Get to work!

That’s it! You’re now ready to start on some great illustrations using your new custom painted texture objects. You can combine textures to make new shapes. You can layer them to achieve deep and complex colour fields. You can even turn some of your scanned brush marks into custom brushes to use as you illustrate.

The danger here is to only do this process once, then rely on these same textures over and over again. It’s important to not overuse your new textures. Make the most out of them, then make some new ones. You’ll find that the more you do, the better they’ll look, and you’ll have new ideas after each batch. Keep things fresh for yourself and your art will follow suit.

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