In my third year at CalArts I took a visual development class and discovered the wonders of adding texture to digital art. Ever since, I’ve been a bit obsessed with painting my own textures to scan into my computer. Most of my watercolors have thus been spent on creating colorful, blobby gradients and paint splatters.
When I visited the arboretum this May with my friend, Charlotte, I brought some of those watercolors with me and painted the plants we saw there. I wasn’t sure what to do with it when I was done, so I thought I’d scan it and play with it as a texture.
It ended up evolving into something bigger, and I wound up painting several other watercolor textures to layer into 3 different animation ideas.
The individual results created with these pieces are posted on my Instagram, but they’re pretty small and compressed on that platform. That’s why I compiled all three into the video above.
This was a super fun personal project and I hope to take this style of combining traditional media with vector animation further someday, perhaps as a music video or short film.
Elyse Filigheri 