Chapter 7 Summary—English

Texture

Lesson 1: Texture in Your Life
Textures are an important factor in life, influencing your decisions about things such as clothing or food. You perceive textures with both touch and vision. Texture is the element of art that refers to how things feel, or look as if they might feel, if touched. When you look at a photograph of a texture, you experience visual texture. Visual texture is the illusion of a three-dimensional surface. There are two kinds of visual texture: simulated and invented. Simulated textures imitate real or tactile texture, the texture you feel, such as when vinyl flooring is made to look like stone. Invented textures are two-dimensional patterns that do not represent real surface qualities but evoke memories of unusual textures. From the pattern of light and dark values on a surface, you can tell whether a surface is smooth or rough. Rough surfaces reflect light unevenly while smooth textures reflect light evenly. Surfaces can also be matte or shiny. Matte surfaces reflect soft, dull light. Shiny surfaces reflect lots of bright light. Matte and shiny surface can be both rough and smooth. Artists can recreate all of these textures by focusing on reflections of light and color.

Lesson 2: How Artists Use Texture
Artists use both visual and tactile textures to make you remember your previous texture experiences. This way, artists can convey feelings about their subjects. Color and value patterns are used to produce the illusion of textures such as velvet and lace. To create tactile textures, the artist Vincent van Gogh left swirls of thick paint on his canvases to make the colors look brighter. Other artists add real textures by attaching materials, such as paper and fabric, to their artworks, creating collages. Some sculptors imitate the texture of skin, hair, and cloth while others create new textures. Architects and interior designers must be aware of texture and can use it to make buildings, rugs, and furniture blend into or stand out from their environments. In crafts, artists pay attention to all types of textures. Some artists even invent textures, using rubbing, scratching, and pressing techniques known as frottage, grattage, and decalcomania. In frottage, a freshly painted canvas is placed right side up over a raised texture and rubbed or scraped across the surface of the paint. To create grattage effects, wet paint is scratched with a variety of tools such as forks, razors, and combs. In decalcomania, paint is forced into random textured patterns.