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Texture Refers To The Tactile Qualities of A Surface - The Way Objects Actually Feel or The Way They Look Like They Would Feel

Texture refers to the tactile qualities of a surface and how objects feel or look like they would feel. There are two approaches to texture - actual textures you can feel in sculptures, ceramics, etc., and implied textures made to look textured in two-dimensional works. Painters from the 15th to 17th centuries aimed to simulate a variety of textures and capture the visual range of touch, like Rembrandt using thick paint to add texture to flesh and metal.

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405 views3 pages

Texture Refers To The Tactile Qualities of A Surface - The Way Objects Actually Feel or The Way They Look Like They Would Feel

Texture refers to the tactile qualities of a surface and how objects feel or look like they would feel. There are two approaches to texture - actual textures you can feel in sculptures, ceramics, etc., and implied textures made to look textured in two-dimensional works. Painters from the 15th to 17th centuries aimed to simulate a variety of textures and capture the visual range of touch, like Rembrandt using thick paint to add texture to flesh and metal.

Uploaded by

Veligen Berueda
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Texture refers to the tactile qualities of a surface – the way objects actually feel or the way they look

like they would feel.


Texture is an important element of design because it engages the sense of touch as well as vision. Objects can be rough or
smooth, wet or dry, sticky or slick, hard or soft, brittle or flexible.
There are two main approaches to texture:
Sculptures, ceramics, mixed-media collages, fiber art, etc., may have bumpy or varied surfaces – actual textures you can
feel. A painting, drawing, print, or other two-dimensional work can be made to look like a textured surface – implied
texture.

The painters of the Northern Renaissance and the Dutch


Golden Age, the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries,
were very interested in the simulation of a wide variety
of textures. One main goal of artists from those periods
was to excel at telling the truth about the material world.
They worked to capture the full visual range of the sense
of touch. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669, Netherlands)
is well known for his use of impasto, or very thick
application of paint, in order to heighten the sense of
reality in many of his paintings by adding actual texture.
This can be seen in his handling of flesh on some of his
self-portraits, as well as his rendering of metal and
jewelry in his painting of Belshazzar’s Feast. (Figure
2.47)

Exercise 1: Think and Talk About It


1. Identify at least 5 different textures in this
artwork.
2. What elements of art did the artist use to
create texture?
3. Where would you find these textures in
the real world?

Jan Van Eyck Arnolfini Portrait, 1434


The design element of shape is the next element in the walk up the ladder of dimension.

A shape is an enclosed area of space created


through lines and other elements of the
composition. Shape has two dimensions, length
and width.

There are two broad categories of shape:


geometric and organic. Geometric shapes are
regular and ordered shapes using straight lines
and curves. Organic shapes are generally
irregular and often chaotic.

Hans Arp (1886-1966, France, lived


Switzerland), in his work Untitled, used torn
paper and cut shapes to create an abstract
composition. While squares are geometric
objects, Arp’s torn and irregular edges transform
them into organic shapes. The orientation of
those shapes roughly approximates a grid
structure, but again, their deviation from a
regular order implies a chaotic and accidental
arrangement. In this work, Arp is dancing on the
“edge of order.” (Figure 2.38)

In two-dimensional artworks, shapes are figures


placed on a two-dimensional surface that is
known as a ground. This creates a relationship
between foreground and background known as
the figure/ground relation. The figure is the
object that appears to be in front of the ground.
In some artworks this relationship is intentionally unclear. In this case, an effect known as
figure/ ground reversal can occur. In figure/ground reversal, what was seen as the positive shape
of the figure can also be seen as the negative space of the ground. This effect disrupts the sense
of space in an artwork and disorients the viewer. (Escher Woodcut II Strip 3, Maurits Cornelis
Escher: http://www.tau.ac.il/~tsurxx/FigureGround/Escher2.GIF)
Exercise 2: Think and Talk About It
1. Identify and draw three different geometric
shapes and three different organic shapes.
2. Why did the artist depict this artwork using
shape rather than form?
3. How do the shapes relate to music?

Pablo Picasso Three Musicians, 1911

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