• How to get texture into your art.

Using Old Paint

Don’t forget that as well as using a base coat of a thick texture or texture paste, or adding some kind of texture to your paint – like sand or powdered plaster, that you can create some extra texture on a painting just by using old paint. If you have any left over paint on your palette (and this can be acrylic or oil paint) then scrape it all off into an old plastic pot and keep hold of it.

It doesn’t really matter if it is a mixture of different colours – you can just mix it all up together into a brown muddy colour – because you can just apply it thickly to the canvas or whatever you are using and shape it into scrapes or swirls or just use to apply tick brush marks with a stiff brush.

Leave it to dry for an hour or two if it is acrylic paint or possibly for a few days if it is oils. When using oil paint as a base you need to make sure that you are still applying the ‘fat over lean’ method (i.e. more oil in the upper layers) so it may be worth using acrylic paint under oil paint if you are using it thickly.

Left over oil paint can be used mixed with thinners to provide a base coat of colour for a canvas or board so this still does not go to waste. There is nothing worse that starting off with a completely blank white canvas!

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