Texture

Texture is an obvious and important element in a painting. To save confusion it can be broken into two parts.

Physical Texture is the texture you can actually feel with your hand. The build up of paint, slipperiness of soft pastel, layering of collage - all the things that change the nature of the paper’s surface.

Visual Texture is the illusion of physical texture, created with the materials you use. Paint can be manipulated to give the impression of texture, while the paper surface remains smooth and flat.

Traditional transparent watercolor makes little use of physical texture other than the roughness of the paper. Mixed media allows advantage to be taken of physical as well as visual texture.

Understanding the difference between physical and visual texture helps us take full advantage of this element.

Things to consider:

Texture is often something that finds its way into a painting in an accidental sort of way, particularly with mixed media. Lumps, bumps and scratches pop up all over the place, often bearing no relationship to the painting. Make it a habit to question whether these marks help the work or just add unnecessary confusion.

Texture can have more impact through variation and relief. Contrasting rough, course areas with orderly patterned areas and providing smooth areas of relief will make a painting far more interesting than an even, unrelieved texture running from edge to edge.

Remember - creating textures is easy, it’s where and how you place them that makes the difference between a good painting and an ordinary one.

Value and contrast are often dependent upon the texture of the the object being rendered.

On slick reflective surfaces, there is a broad value range, usually from bright white to black. The transitions between these extreme values is usually more sudden than on a matte or heavily textured surface. You will find that reflective surfaces placed in compositions with heavily textured objects will create interesting contrasts that compliment each other.

Hint: When dealing with texture, remember that heavily textured items will have slow gradual changes in value unless the plane ends abruptly. In contrast reflective surfaces will have sudden changes in value, from one extreme to another, with only slight changes in the direction of the planes.

Sources:  John Lovett and Studio Chalkboard

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