Using Textures- Marble Paper

Texture is a key aspect to concept art, it can enhance and support the artist's concept behind the work. Some artists use texture as a major influence on our response to the work. Textures used in the right way can draw our attention to key aspects of the art work in so we spend more time with the work.

To create this marble paper I simply took a large shallow tray and filled it with water, and added ink mixed with white spirit into the water, into the tray of water, swirling it around to create a marble effect. The oil then splitter with the water, meaning that when you put the paper on top of the water the ink hold the patterns. I found the most successful prints were those which i used limited colour, and applied little ink, as too much ink create a lot of blobs of inks, which can be a little distracting.

I then wanted to use the marble texture into a piece of concept inspired art. To start with I drew directly on top of the marble paper. The patten above I imagined to be an underwater scene, with mythical sea creatures, which I tried to give a futuristic spin to it. 

However the colours were quite string so that my drawings didn't really show up very well, even though I used black pen and then tired to emphasise the shapes with coloured pencils.

As my experiment wasn't that successful i decided to use it directly as a texture. I draw out some shell shapes using black pen, scanned those into Photoshop and shaped the texture to fit seamlessly into the shape. As the black lines were quite strong I then changed the colour of them to fit in with the colour of the texture behind.

To try and finish of the image I then tired to blow up the marble paper and paste it into the background of the shells. This does add a different element to the image, and I think it would work well as an entire underwater scene, but as stand alone shells I prefer the shells with a plainer background, as it does distract from the texture in the shells.