The Texture Quest goes on

Another test how to create textures I like with a tad of graphic elements or abstraction. I rummage through my drawers and find these three sheets of paper that were left from who knows when. I quickly create a few drawings on them by putting them up to monitor as a makeshift lightbox, and tape them down with gummed tape after wetting them.
I start with washes in watercolour, and it turns out the paper isn't just bad, it's AWFUL. It soaks like a sponge and is very easily bruised, so there's nothing to do but push through.

My subjects are a simple portrait of an elderly woman, playing with the idea of autumn (of life), medusa (for which I created a ten-minute model in Blender), and cluster headaches (because I have a morbid fascination with illnesses, they are described as the worst pain there is, often centring around one eye and temple).
My tools are everyday brushes, #6, #12, and #14 rounds (although being from different brands, the #14 is much larger than the twelve), and a #24 filbert for large washes; spray bottle (mine is from the hairstyling aisle), cling film out of the kitchen for effects, acrylic marker, coloured pencils, and masking fluid to protect small areas.

Then I forgot to take images of the first stages, naturally. I start by masking off the flower and leaves in Headache and Autumn.
For Autumn, I drew in the tree shape after making a circle for it to fit in, with a rigger brush and a mixture of burnt umber and black, then go into the face with the same mixture plus raw sienna with a fairly small brush, and a greyish blue for the shirt. I wash the same-ish mixture into the image from the upper left corner and spatter some of the tree mixture by tapping a brush on my other hand.
Headache gets a few washes on the face in diluted black, a strong black gradient in the background. I then drip diluted cyan ink with a pipette and tip the board to make it flow. I spatter red/umbra and drip some of it and add reds to the face, then wash the cyan ink over the entire image, doubling up in the bottom area. I add some diluted white acrylics to make the proverbial flames appear white-hot in the centre.
For Medusa I wash in some shadows on the face with only black, heavily diluted, then add greyish umbra and the cyan from Headache, including some pure blacks. I spatter with umbra. 

What I wanted from the spattering was the typical pattern of a fairly sharp splash with some drips around it, and soften them as I choose with more water from brushes and the spray bottle. That didn't happen, so I went a little nuts with the spatters to see if anything cool would happen from just a lot of it. You can see the paper being ruined by, well, nothing really. I think I tried to pick cat fluff off the wet paper (there are four indoors cats living with me. I cannot tell you how often I need to pick cat hair out of my paints and brushes).

I add more white acrylic to Headache and cover it with cling film to dry with texture. I repeat that step until satisfied. It's a technique I learned for watercolours, but it works just fine with acrylics when handled carefully so the film doesn't dry into the paint and won't come off; with sufficiently diluted paint, this has not happened so far. Medusa gets some highlights using a #2 brush with white gouache, part of my watercolour box. The good thing is that I can re-wet and drag the gouache around, since the soaky paper makes controlled painting difficult.

I let it all dry overnight, then add some strokes with coloured pencils (watercolour pencils would have been better, but with the many accidents, I really didn't care if the waxy pencils would refuse taking on watercolours). Then I spatter white acrylic and previous mixtures all over the place. Rubbing the masking film off in Headache has the expected result of tearing the paper, so after a quick wash in watercolours I go over it with acrylic in white and raw umbra to tighten up the fuzzy edges (cluster headaches are more frequent in phases, with periods of no episodes at all. I heard they were more frequent in spring and autumn, hence the flower and fallen leaf). The peach petal in Autumn is drawn with coloured pencils only, and I add some white lines with acrylic marker and french curves.

Finally, since I am confident trying to get the gummed tape off will not work, I cut through the tape and tear it off against a ruler for nice deckle edges.