TEXTURE

OBJECTIVES:

• To define texture as an element of art.

• To use materials with varied textures in creating the group mural.

• To appreciate artworks with different textures.

• Complimentary - use of two opposite colors • Double

Complimentary - use of four (2x2)

opposite colors

• Triad - use of three colors that form a

triangle

• Analogous - use of three or more adjacent

colors

• Monochromatic - use of a simple color with varied

lights and shades

The properties of colors are:

Warm/advancing colors : red, orange, yellow

Cool/receding colors : green, blue, violet

Neutral Colors : white, black, gray

Color is the most symbolic among the elements of art as it is the most attractive. It expresses
the feelings of artists, designers, and manufacturers. It expresses joy, celebration/festivities,
struggle through the warm colors of red, orange, yellow; while feelings of sadness, tranquility,
rest, and defeat are expressed through the cool colors of blue, violet, green and black.
Value as an element is connected with color as it shows the properties of shade and intensity. It
is the gradual transformation of color from light to dark or from dark to light.

Since you are now familiar with lines, shapes or forms, colors and value, let’s go to the fifth
element-texture.

Texture is the surface characteristic of any object when felt by the sense of touch. It is the
element of art that appeals to touching and feeling whether an object’s surface is smooth or
rough, soft or cool or hot, wet or dry, light or heavy. Those characteristics of texture could be
illustrated based on our standard concepts and experiences with the things, so that a glass of
water with ice could be drawn or painted as such, having the psychological feeling of wet and
cold. The barks of trees, scales of fishes, feathers of birds, furs of animals, rocks could all be
illustrated with rough visual textures. These appear rough visually, but in reality these are only
two-dimension drawings or paintings, still smooth when touched on the surfaces of the paper,
board or canvas. The impression of texture is only suggested to the eyes, a type of optical
illusions like the drawings below.

CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION

Visual textural effects are often achieved through shading and use of line and form patterns,
either creatively done or based on the surfaces of real objects. Patterns of lines as repetitive
design are used extensively in texture, as in the illustration where the teddy bear’s dotted pattern
and the langka’s zigzag texture are contrasts in surface roughness and hardness; the kettle and
mirror are shaded to show smoothness and hardness.
Texture as an element of art is extensively used in architecture and sculpture, where the tactile
and visual effects vary with the use of bricks, marble, adobe, cement, ceramic tiles, steel, wood
and glass finish. In modern painting, some painters use the technique of impasto, wherein thick
paint pigments are used to effect real rough and swirling surfaces, while some use collage, a
technique of cutting, pasting, glueing pictures, textured papers or boards, textile, branches or
leaves, and other recycled materials.

There are three ways of using and showing texture:

1. Natural - real textures of objects and natural things; can be seen and touched.

2. Artificial - textures of objects and natural things are done on ceramics, glass,
metal, paper, plastic, textile or wood.

3. Visual - texture of objects and natural things are shown on drawings, paintings,

pictures, prints, etc.