Acrylic Paint: Achieving Textural Effects

Acrylics with impasto and gel mediums create superb contrasts of rough and smooth, peaks and valleys that I find quite beautiful and useful in many landscape and abstract paintings.

This type of texture works great for tree bark, building walls, hills, ocean waves, even certain flowers lend well to this approach.

I mixed the acrylics with the impasto and applied using a palette knife quite thickly. The action I used was similar to using a spatula to smooth on the whipped egg meringue gently yet with a pleasing textural pattern.

In the above  photo,  I applied the paint over a canvas that had an existing pale dull and cool background, in order  to help create additional depth.  The warmth of the yellow advances that area, making it a clear statement it is a foreground area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

with Beauty of Bark, through the variations of texture and non texture,  there is the created illusion of depth. The flatness and non textured area implies a Background. The medium raised up textured areas implies a middle ground area.  Where the paint is fully raised and peaked implies a nearness which is applicable to the Foreground area.

So even in such a small area of paint that is purely abstract – there is Depth achieved through the textural variations that were applied.

 

Desert  Sand  is a small detail  from a  larger piece.  With  so much  colour,  detail  and  texture  going  on here  I had to  make sure  I targeted  the  Focal  Point  to get all  this  action!

 

If I would have placed it elsewhere,   this  ‘busy-ness’   would have been overwhelmingly too much information  and  distracting away  from my intended focal point.