How to Simulate Texture in Art

This tool will teach the basics of drawing with pencil a variety of common textures.

Engaging Questions

  • Do the simulated textures look like the real textures or even close to the real textures?

Teacher Goals

  • To be able to simulate six different textu metallic, wooden, glass, oily, furry, and choice of artist.

Required Resources

  • Required Materials

    All that is required is paper and pencil.

  • Resource

Optional Resources

  • The Alphabet of Art

    The Alphabet of Art was developed by the late Robert J. McKnight, a sculptor, designer, and theoretician of art. The web site's authors are Robert J. McKnight and Jack Massa. Use of the material is free for educational purposes.

Steps

  1. What is Texture?

    Texture is one of the five elements of art. Art is a universal language. A picture or sculpture can be created an no matter what language the viewer of that piece of artwork speaks, he/she has been communicated to by the artist. Just as in any language though, there are components which create that language. In the English language, those components are nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. (You get the picture.) In art, those components are what we call the elements of art. The elements are space, line, shape/form, value/color, and texture.

    Texture is the element of art that refers to how things feel or how they look like they might feel on the surface. Texture is perceived by touch and sight. Objects can have rough or smooth textures and matte or shiny surfaces.

    Types of texture:
    1. REAL OR ACTUAL TEXTURE -- texture that can be perceived through touch.

    2. VISUAL OR IMPLIED TEXTURE -- the two-dimensional illusion of a three-dimensional surface.

    a. SIMULATED TEXTURE -- the imitation of a real texture by using a two-dimensional pattern to create the illusion of a three-dimensional surface.

    b INVENTED TEXTURE -- the creation of a texture by repeating lines and shapes in a two-dimensional pattern.

  2. Textured Hand Example

    Look at the example of the hand provided below and study how each texture was created.

  3. Tracing Hand

    Lay your hand, with fingers spread out, on a piece of drawing paper and trace around it.

  4. Metallic Texture

    On the pinky finger, simulate the texture of metal.  Do this by simply shading in from dark to light and curving the value lines around at the tip of the finger.  Make sure to leave the paper white where the highlight should be on the finger.  This is important because metal objects are usually very shiny and reflect light.

  5. Wooden Texture

    On the ring finger, simulate the texture of wood.  Do this by drawing irregular (not straight) lines very close to one another.  An added touch to make the finger look more like wood, would be to add a knot in the wood and draw all other lines around the knot in the wood.

  6. Glass Texture

    On the middle finger, simulate the texture of glass by lightly shading in the whole finger and then pulling out long highlights with an eraser.

  7. Oily Texture

    On the pointer finger, draw an oily blob shape oozing over the top of the finger.  Shading is important with oil because where the light hits the oil, it should be a pure white highlight.  Oily objects appear shiny (any wet objects appear shiny).  After placing the highlights on the oily blobs, the rest of the oil should gradually get darker until the opposite sides of the highlights' surfaces are dark.

  8. Furry Texture

    The thumb of the hand should simulate fur.  This can be done easily by drawing many lines close together all pointed toward the same direction.  The longer the lines, the longer the fur will appear.

  9. Your Choice of Texture

    The palm of the hand should be done with your own choice of texture.  Any other texture imaginable (besides ones already drawn on the fingers) should be added to the palm area.  At this point it would even be possible to  use a rubbing of a texture.  This could be done in this area by placing the paper in the area of the palm over the desired textured surface and rubbing the top of the paper with a pencil.

  10. Shading Hand

    The hand will have a more realistic approach if shaded appropriately to the desired angle of light.  Refer to the Aurora tool "How to Shade Objects, Using Values" for more information on shading.

Teacher Notes

  • Refer to background information under instructions.

  • Duration: One hour and a half

Learner Notes

  • Refer to background information under instructions.

Mentor Notes

  • Refer to background information under instructions.

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