OUGD503 - Studio Brief 02 - Texture Experimentation

It was decided that the style of our illustrations would make use of collaged elements, similar to aesthetics found within the Charlie and Lola books and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. In order to help us with such elements, we took a primary trip to Ilkley Moor to gather textures, drawings and reference photographs which can help us better recreate the textures of the moors and produce scenes accurate to the real experience.

One form of this gathering of textures was to try and print with natural materials found amongst the moors. To do this, we experimented with painting various rocks with black ink and pressing these against a sheet of paper in the hope that it's texture would be transferred onto the page. For this particularly, it was found that the rocks did not work as well as hoped, since it's uneven surface meant that only the raised bumps were replicated.
This same process was also tried using the grass, painting one patch with the ink and then pressing the paper over this to produce a print. This worked much better in producing texture, replicating the sharp direction of individual blades of grass.

Another way in which we produced texture was by taking rubbings from surfaces, such as rocks and tree trunks. For this we placed pieces of paper over the surface and rubbed either pencil or charcoal over the entire page. Again, due to the uneven surface, the charcoal rubbings only reproduced the more raised elements of the rocks, however this has produced an interesting contrast in colour, texture and shape. Pencil rubbings worked much better in that the size of the pencil allowed it to reach into smaller bumps on the rock and tree surfaces to replicate the texture as a whole, giving it a more accurate representation.