Texture and Quaint French Shutters

This assignment is using texture! Last week we also did texture, but it was more of an exercise to discover new textures than a painting. This week we get to apply it. The piece I decided to do is based off of this photo reference that I took in France:

 

Now, this may look familiar to some of you who are familiar with my work from my first year or so of school.

 

 

I'm actually quite fond of both of these pieces, as they were big milestones for me. Both of them were fun to work with because when I was done, I realized that I could do this art thing! It sounds silly, but whatever. The first one is an oil lift out I did for media experimentation, and the second one is micron pen and sharpie on a huge piece of 17x22 paper. It was the first piece of artwork I did here, I think, and it took foooorrrreeevvvveeerrrr. And I loved every minute of it. Go ahead and click on the picture so you can see the details of every. single. leaf. of ivy.

Anyways, that's enough reminiscing for now. My point was, I love this photo of these worn out shutters with the adorable, precious, sweet heart cut out. It's so simple, but I love it. As you may have noticed from the first picture, I've taken the liberty to remove the flags. I've actually done that in every piece that I've done now. Next time I use this photo reference, I'll keep them in the final piece. Here is some work in progress from the watercolor I'm working on now.

 

For the texture of the shutters I used saran wrap that I pulled and scrunched so the gathers would be verticle, making a nice large wood grain pattern. The wall was textured with table salt, and I'm very excited with how it turned out. For the part that is white here in the picture, the cement, I used  wax paper. I don't have a picture of that yet because It's pretty close to finished right now and I just want to wait to show the final piece.

 

This is my little study I did (just with pen and ink, sadly, not watercolor like it should have been) during a lecture. I have the flags here because I did want to do them with this piece, but it just wasn't working out on the full size paper. Next time.

So that is it for now, but I'll be sure to post when I get it finished. I'm so excited to see what everyone else is making with their textures!