Textures

Looking at the work of SHAUN TAN, I thought that one of the ways that he might’ve achieved the old stained look of his graphic novel “The Arrival”, is that he created the textures separately and then applied them to the work after they’d been drawn.  So I decided to experiment with some textures of my own.

I used Winsor and Newton watercolour paper for these experiments and 2 different kinds of tea (all in the form of tea-bags); PG, Rooibos and Tetley’s. I dedicated an A5 sheet of watercolour paper to each of the different teas and lay wash after wash of tea on the paper (which I kept in a tea tray to minimise mess and to allow myself to apply freely) allowing time for each layer to dry and using both full paper washes and just splashes.

The results were that the Tetley’s green tea was the most subtle. It was very light and not nearly as strong in colouration as the Rooibos and PG. The strongest was PG closely followed by Rooibos (which left a slight red colouration on the paper).

I then took the tea bags out of the cups and opened them onto a longer piece of paper. I kept the tea leaves from each of the bags in their own little columns to find out what would happen to each of them. I rubbed the leaves into the paper, added a little water, put another piece of paper the same size over the top, and left it there overnight. The resulting texture was a sort of cloudy effect and, where the Tetley’s was the weakest when staining with washes, the tea leaves created the most impressive texture.

After I’d set up the tea bag experiment, I decided I’d try something different to make use of the leftover tea. I crinkled up a piece of paper so that some parts would sit above the tea level and others below. The tea I used was a mixture of PG and Rooibos, so that I could get the slight red-brown of the Rooibos but also the strong colour of the PG. I found the result to be very aesthetically pleasing.

Later I decided to crinkle up some paper to see what textures I could get from that. The result is multiple feathered creases (due to the thickness of the paper it didn’t create any clean edges; something that I think made it easier to cover the paper).

I thought about applying these to my comic to enhance the feel of it, mostly when portraying the protagonist as these textures seem dirty, gritty and would appear like a blemish. However then that lead me onto the train of thought of what I could do for the new guy, and I decided that it would probably be a good idea to create some patterns to overlay and show his influence more as well has enhance his brighter colours. As of yet I have nothing but I plan to experiment with some patters soon. I think I might do an A4 sheet of patterns so that I can overlay the bits that I like and keep reusing it in different ways but have a continuous style. It would also save time.