As an artist you may want to make your own texture to use in paintings whether they are abstract or not. I personally found that having my own texture mix gave me more control over what I could do with it.
None of the ready made textures that you could buy cut it for me in terms of thickness, so that is why I came up with my own recipe for texture to use under my paintings.
Cost Effective
Not only can it give you more control over the consistency, but it can also be quite cost effective to make your own texture for use in your paintings or other artwork.
The reason for this is that you can use much cheaper building materials rather than materials that are specifically made for artists.
Often artist specific products have a somewhat inflated price as they are considered specialized materials. They can do a good job but in particular if you are working on a large scale then it might become a bit cost prohibitive.
Ingredients
I have been making my own texture for a number of years and in that time have used quite a few different ingredients. However there are a few key things that you need to include to make your own painting texture:
A thick product for the base that provides the substance to your texture mix. The type of material that you need for this is something like stucco, plaster powder or ready mixed plaster or something such as artex.
Depending on where you live you can get hold of different materials. This is one of the products that I can recommend in the US – it’s not stucco but something pretty close. There are only a few options it seems that are sometimes not available but see what you can find. Sometimes Stucco pops up on Amazon but not often.
Also, I did find some Stucco on Amazon in the UK at one time but it now seems to be out of stock again. Once again you can find this ready mixed plaster which is pretty similar here (Amazon UK).
Add to this one essential ingredient to make the texture paste flexible enough to add to a canvas and not crack off. I highly recommend you use PVA.
In different parts of the world PVA comes in different forms (in the US you can use Elmers Glue), in the UK PVA is widely available for example this one is a premium art PVA.
Hopefully you can get hold of some where you are. The essential part of the PVA is the V – vinyl, which gives the PVA flexibility. So you can buy some PVA Craft Glue or some industrial PVA which is often available from hardware or DIY stores.
If you want your texture to have some colour then you can also add paint to it, this can be useful if you want to use it for a base but the colour will be changed by the white of the texture.
Painting Texture Recipe
So, here are a few recipes for you to make your own texture:
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Mix stucco with PVA in the mix of 3:1 (or try different mixtures to get different results from 2:1 to 5:1)
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Ready-mixed plaster and PVA – similar to stucco in quantity
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Mix gesso, plaster powder and PVA in relative quantities of 1:2:1
Basically you can try different options and once you have your mixture you can also add other things to it e.g. sand to get different effects. My tried and tested recipe is stucco and PVA so I know that works the best for me.
If you make up too much texture then you can keep it in an airtight container but try and use it within a few days (or weeks if it is really airtight).
Once you have applied the texture to the painting, make sure it is fully dry before you paint over it. This will usually be at least 24 hours but longer if it is put on thicker or in some atmospheric conditions. You can then paint over it with either acrylics or oils – if you are using oils I would recommend putting a coat of acrylic paint first.
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