Texture


 * __Texture:__**

Textures range from the smoothest polished mirror to the roughest mountain range as seen from an airplane. The term is often misused to refer only to rough surfaces but this is not correct. All surfaces have texture. A designer recognizes that different textures can affect interest in different ways. Some surfaces are inviting and some are repellent and so are the textures that suggest those surfaces. Using different textures can increase interest in a composition by adding variety without changing color or value relationships. While texture can make an image more interesting it is not a strong enough element to be useful for organizing a composition. Value and color contrasts are more efficient at that. __The two kinds of texture are:__ __**Tactile Texture**__ Tactile means touch. Tactile texture is the actual (3D) feel of a surface. This is of paramount importance to three-dimensional design but of only moderate interest in two-dimensional design. The actual surface texture needs to either be felt, or seen with light raking across its surface to make the texture visible. Painters are most likely to take advantage of this to give their painting's surface a lively look. Paint can be built up into rough peaks in a technique called impasto. Vincent Van Gogh is famous for this. Some painters add sand to their paint to make more tactile texture. Collages can use textured paper and other three-dimensional materials (like string, cardboard, sandpaper, etc.) to make a tactile surface. Visual texture refers to the illusion of the surface's texture. It is what tactile texture looks like (on a 2D surface). The textures you see in a photograph are visual textures. No matter how rough objects in the photograph look, the surface of the photograph is smooth and flat. Both types are important to the designer, but in 2D art, the illusion of texture is used more than tactile texture. Visual texture is always a factor in a composition because everything has a surface and hence a texture. The construction paper you have used all semester has a boring texture that is only slightly different from the sketch book's paper. Some other colored papers are more visually interesting. This is because of their color, but also their texture. Look around the house to see what interestingly textured papers (both visual and tactile) you can find (start with wrapping paper). When photographs are used for collage materials, texture starts to take on more importance. Now you can use the illusion of many different textures, as well as the colors and objects in the pictures. This is one of the things that make collage such a potentially powerful technique. What you lack in control and versatility is more than made up by the rich variety of colors, textures and images that are at the your disposal. Collage allows someone with modest technical skills, and no drawing skills, to create a sophisticated image. Texture is one of the more subtle design elements. It can make an image richer and more interesting, but is not likely to save a poor composition all by itself. Most textures have a naturalistic quality; they repeat a motif in a random way. A motif is any recurring thematic element or repeated figure in design. It could be an object, shape, color, direction, etc. With a texture you may be aware of the repeating motif but you are more aware of the surface. Our senses of sight and touch are closely connected. Scale, distance and light are important modifing factors in the perception of textures and surface, all material have some degrees of textures. The fine of the scale or the smaller the pattern, the smoother it appear to be, even rougher textures seen from the distance appear to be relatively smooth. The relative scale of a texture can affect the apparent shape and position of a plane in space. Textures can accentuate a plane lenght or width and can also make a plane appear closer, reduce it scale and increase their visual weight. In general, textures tend to visually fill the spaces in which they exist
 * __Visual Texture__**