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Texture- Element of Art

Texture refers to how things feel or look as if they might feel if touched.

Some adjectives used to describe textures are smooth, soft, fine, rough, fuzzy, sharp, prickly, billowy, hard, bumpy.

Anything that has a surface has some type of texture. Texture is the way a surface looks and feels.

When you actually touch something it is called tactile or actual texture.  You can touch the texture of a smooth surface or an uneven rough surface of a painting.  A collage is a picture created with many different types tactile texture.

When you see something and you can guess or remember how those objects feel, that is visual, implied or simulated texture; the illusion of a three dimensional surface.

The artist tries to draw or paint objects so that they appear to have texture.  He/she will attempt to make the silk look shiny or a rock look rough and coarse.  Artists do this in 2D art using various types of marks, techniques, tools and media.  

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Actual texture is the real thing. It is the actual way a surface feels when it is felt or touched, such as rough, smooth, soft, hard, silky, slimy, sticky, etc. 3-D art such as sculpture and architectural structures are tactile in nature because they can be felt. An example of real texture would be wood, sandpaper, canvas, rocks, glass, granite, metal, etc.

Even the brush strokes used in a painting can create a textured surface that can be felt and seen. The building up of paint on the surface of a canvas or board, so that it creates actual texture, is called impasto. Painters may choose to apply their paints thickly or thinly depending on overall effect that is wished to be achieved.

Implied texture is not real texture. All textures you observe in photographs are visual textures. No matter how rough objects may seem to appear in a photograph, the surface of the photograph is always going to be smooth and flat to the touch.

Artists can create the illusion of texture in their paintings by simulation or implying it through the use of various art elements such as line, shading and color. It is created by repeating lines, dot or other shapes to create a pattern. Varying the size, density, and orientation of these marks will produce other desired effects as well.

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