Home decorators as well as artists can add extra texture to their painted work.
You can create textured paintings with a number of artist's materials and a few that you may find around your home. Whether you are making artistic works on stretched canvas, painting a mural or doing decorative painting on a room in your house, texture can add dimension to any surface color that you apply. You can add texture to oil, acrylic and enamel paint, and you can create the illusion of texture with watercolor washes without making the paint thicker.
Instructions
1. Mix your acrylic paint with artist's thickening gel. You can buy jars of this acrylic, water-based thickening agent in art supply stores. Mix the color you want to paint on your palette and add portions of thickening gel to the color in small increments, a teaspoon at a time. Mix the paint and thickening gel thoroughly with a palette knife until both are combined. Apply the thickened paint with a brush. You can make deep impasto brushstrokes in the color. Note, however, that thickening gel is a neutral tone so that the more gel that you add to a color, the less vibrant the color.
2. Add glaze to your oil paint. You can buy oil glaze in a specialty paint store and it will mix with your oil-based paints to give them a glossy surface. You can also add small amounts of artist's oil color to glaze and paint layers of glaze and color over a surface coat of paint for a translucent, multilayered effect. For variety, apply glazes and paint with a rag or a sponge dipped into the mixture. The texture of the applicator adds variety to the surfaces you paint.
3. Lay down washes of watercolor on a stretched sheet or watercolor paper. Stretch the paper by soaking it in fresh water and tacking it to a board. When it dries you can apply color to its flat, taut surface. With the paper's surface still wet with watercolor wash, apply a handful of salt granules to the page. The salt will leave feathery white areas on the page that add a complex texture to the painted surface. Brush away excess salt once the paint dries.
