EoA: Texture

This is one of my personal favorite aspects of art.  Texture refers to one of two things:

1. the actual physical way a piece of art feels (hard, smooth, rough, bumpy) to the touch, with your fingers.
2. the implied texture of a drawing.  It feels smooth to the touch, but it *looks* like it could give you the physical sensations in the same way the actual sensations do (bumpy, smooth, rough, knobby, furry).

A great example of how to use texture is found in the works of one of my favorite artists, Vincent Van Gogh.    In this painting, it looks like the bark of the tree is rough and that the leaves of the tree would probably be crispy if you touched it.  The painting uses both aspects of texture.  Van Gogh slathered on paint and it's bumpy to the physical touch, but the images invoke the sense you'd get if you could touch the real thing, too.

Van Gogh's Mulberry Tree

Detail of Mulberry Tree

Resources:

http://www.williamsclass.com/ElectiveClassArt/ArtElementNotes.htm