Unit 3Textures in Visual Language

In the visual arts, texture is the perceived surface quality of a work of art. It is an element of two-dimensional and three-dimensional design and is distinguished by its perceived visual and physical properties. Use of texture, along with other elements of design, can convey a variety of messages and emotions.

Definition

2D TEXTURESPhysical or tactile texuresPhysical texture, also known as actual texture or tactile texture, are the actual variations upon a surface. This can include, but is not limited to, fur, wood grain, sand, smooth surface of canvas or metal, , glass, and leather. It differentiates itself from visual texture by having a physical quality that can be felt by touch.

Specific use of a texture can effect the smoothness that an artwork conveys. For instance, use of rough surfaces can be visually active, whilst smooth surfaces can be visually restful. The use of both can give a sense of personality to a design, or be utilized to create emphasis, rhythm, contrast, etc.

Light is an important factor for physical artwork, because it can affect how a surface is viewed. Strong lights on a smooth surface can obscure the readability of a drawing or photograph, while they can create strong contrasts in a highly textured surface such as moose or pigs.

Visual TexturesVisual texture is the illusion of having physical texture. Every material and every support surface has its own visual texture and needs to be taken into consideration before creating a composition. As such, materials such as canvas and watercolour paper are considerably rougher than, for example, photo-quality computer paper and may not be best suited to creating a flat, smooth texture. Photography, drawings and paintings use visual texture both to portray their subject matter realistically and with interpretation. Texture in these media are generally created by the repetition of shape and line.

Implied texture is a visual texture that has no basis in everyday reality. It is most often utilized in works of abstraction.

Another classification could be ...

Natural textures and Artificial textures

Natural textures are textures that can be found in nature. The wood from tree trunks, stones, grass, leaves, seashellls..

Artificial textures are made or transformed by man; furniture, bricks, industrial objects, machines...

There are many diferent techniques to create textures, but we will experiment with two of them:

● Collage technique● Frottage technique

The composition on the left is made with the collage technique and in the picture above there is a man experimenting with de frottage technique

Collage

A collage (From the French: coller, to glue) is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole.A collage may include newspaper clippings, ribbons, bits of colored or hand-made papers, portions of other artwork or texts, photographs and other found objects, glued to a piece of paper or canvas. The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years, but this technique made a dramatic reappearance in the early 20th century as an art form of novelty.

Here are two exemples obtanied by the collage technique:

Frottage

In art, frottage (from French frotter, "to rub") is a surrealist and "automatic" method of creative production developed by Max Ernst.

In frottage the artist takes a pencil or other drawing tool and makes a rubbing over a textured surface. The drawing can be left as is or used as the basis for further refinement. While superficially similar to brass rubbing and other forms of rubbing intended to reproduce an existing subject, and in fact sometimes being used as an alternate term for it, frottage differs in being aleatoric and random in nature.

It was developed by Ernst in 1925. Ernst was inspired by an ancient wooden floor where the grain of the planks had been accentuated by many years of scrubbing. The patterns of the graining suggested strange images to him. He captured these by laying sheets of paper on the floor and then rubbing over them with a soft pencil.

Textures in Artworks: Miquel Barceló

MIQUEL BARCELÓ

ANTONI TÀPIES

Gustav Klimt