Texture: how it feels, how it looks
Rough, smooth, soft or grainy: with hatching, cross-hatching, stippling and scribbling you draw how something feels, and make areas lighter or darker.
Why
How do you draw that a cat is soft and a stone is rough, when your pencil has only one colour?
Texture is how a surface feels: the bark of a tree, the coat of a dog, a smooth glass.
You can't touch that texture on paper, but you can show it. You do that through the way you place your little lines and dots.
See it
Choose a technique and make the area denser or looser. See how it gets lighter or darker and how it feels different.
Description of the picture
A square area filled with a drawing technique: hatching (parallel little lines), cross-hatching (little lines that cross each other), stippling (little dots) or scribbling (small circles). A slider makes the filling denser or looser, so the area looks darker or lighter. The text says what texture it suggests, such as smooth, rough or soft.
Get it
Real texture you can feel: a collage with fabric, sand in paint, a relief. Implied texture you can only see: it looks rough or soft, but the paper is smooth.
Hatching means filling an area with parallel little lines. Close together it gets dark, far apart it stays light. Long, even lines feel smooth; short lines in different directions feel rougher.
Cross-hatching is a second layer of little lines in another direction on top. That way you make deep shadows without pressing harder.
Stippling means filling with little dots. It feels grainy, like sand or orange peel. Scribbling with small circles gives something soft or woolly, like a jumper or a bush.
With rubbing (frottage) you lay paper on a rough surface and rub over it with a pencil. That way you copy a real texture, such as a coin or tree bark.
You show texture with the shape and density of your little lines and dots: the denser, the darker; the shape of the lines decides how it feels.
Worked example
You are drawing an old wooden door. Which technique suits the wood, and how do you make the shadow under the door handle?
Wood has grain: long lines in one direction. So hatch with long, slightly wavy lines in the direction of the planks.
For the shadow under the handle, add a second layer of little lines in another direction on top: cross-hatching.
Leave the spot where the light falls open: the paper stays white there.
- Answer
Hatching with long lines for the wood, cross-hatching for the shadow.
Do it
Choose a level. You get a new exercise every time, checked straight away.
Make it
A task on paper, in class or at home.
A texture hunt with rubbings
25 to 40 minutes
What you need
- thin sheets of paper (printer paper)
- a soft pencil (4B to 6B) or a wax crayon with its paper removed
- scissors and glue
- a drawing sheet
How to go about it
- Look in the classroom, the playground or at home for six different surfaces: bark, a coin, a tile, a leaf, a grating, fabric.
- Each time, lay a piece of paper on top and rub with the side of the pencil or crayon until the texture appears.
- On your drawing sheet, draw a simple animal or a house with large areas.
- Cut the rubbings to size and glue them into the areas as texture: rough for a roof, striped for a coat.
- Draw the outlines and details over the top again with a fine line.
Look back: Which rubbing looked most like something other than what it came from?
Pitfalls
Wrong: You make things darker by pressing harder.
Pressing hard makes the paper shiny and you can't rub it out any more.
Right: Make it darker with more layers or with lines that are closer together.
Wrong: Hatching lines can go in any direction.
Little lines going every which way look messy and lose the shape.
Right: Choose one direction per area; for round shapes, preferably following the curve.
Wrong: You draw texture equally strongly over the whole object.
Then everything gets equally busy and nothing stands out any more.
Right: Draw texture strongest where the light skims across and close by; let it get calmer towards the back.
In real life
- A banknote has very fine lines on it, drawn with an engraving technique. They make it hard to copy.
- Newspaper cartoonists and comic artists often work in black and white and make shadows with hatching.
- Designers of clothes and furniture choose fabrics for their texture: corduroy, wool, linen.
History
Around 1500 the German artist Albrecht Dürer made engravings in which he showed fabric, fur, stone and light using only fine little lines. Later, in the 19th century, Georges Seurat painted with small dots of colour; that way of painting is called pointillism. The Belgian Théo van Rysselberghe painted like that too.
At the table
At home, take turns closing your eyes and let the other person touch an object. Then, without looking, draw only how it felt. Does the other person recognise it?
A question to talk about together, for parents and children. There is no wrong answer.