Texture-Intro to Drawing Bad Art (Patreon)

The world is full of beautiful, diverse, interesting textures. Variety is the spice of life, and texture is all about creating variety. We've talked about value and form, and thank God that's not all there is. The world would look so boring if it were just made of solid forms and values and everything was the same surface. You could even add color to that and I still wouldn't want to live in that visual dystopia.  

Texture adds character, emotion, a sense of tangibility, and narrative

In this video we'll learn how to simulate textures with a pen or pencil by following this process: pattern to form to value to technique.

I've learned most of this from the pen and ink artist Alphonso Dunn. I'd highly recomend checking out his YouTube Channel and his books books (Pen and Ink a Simple Guide and the complimentary workbook.) Dunn is a very clear communicator of these subjects. His work is mostly pen and ink, but the principles he teaches are useful for any medium.

Pattern to Form to Value to Technique

1. Identify Patterns

First, identify the pattern of the texture you want to recreate. then isolate it into a flat pattern design. Look for the rhythms of the shapes that make up the pattern. Figure out what kind of marks you could make with your pen to emulate the pattern. This process takes some experimentation and observation of life. 

Texture follows Form

Alphonso recommends practicing applying the patterns to simple forms. Boxes at first, because they are the most basic 3D form we have. This allows you to focus on creating the texture without also thinking about complex forms.

Try it on the rounded simple forms too (spheres, cylinders, cones) then try it on organic forms.

Texture follows Value

Textures are like little forms on top of bigger forms. The light source catches pieces of the texture and casts little shadows. But the bigger primary values that apply to the simple box, will still apply with the texture. 

Textures also interact with light differently. wood is less reflective than fur, for example. So keep that in mind when studying textures from life. and pay attention to how light affects different surfaces.

You can also create value scales out of your textures.

Figure out your Technique

One of the funnest and most interesting thing about Texture, in my opinion, is the variety of different techniques you can use. In addition to the marks you can make by moving the pen or pencil in different ways (stippling, scribbling, hatching, etc) texture lends itself to experimentation more than any of the other cold hard fundamentals we've discussed in the Intro to Drawing Bad Art Course.

I'm drawing in pen and ink for these, so I can dip a toothbrush or old stiff bristled brush in ink and do interesting dry brush techniques to simulate fur, or plants. Or splatters to simulate concrete. You can do drips, smears, wipes, and rubs. You can press a paper towel, foil, Saran Wrap or crumpled up paper into wet ink or paint, which imprints the texture into the medium. You can get textures from textures by doing rubbings. And this doesn't even get into the variety of different painting mediums designed to create textures. 

In the Demo portion of this lesson I'll be using some of these various techniques to add texture to a drawing. I hope you'll join me there!

Further Experimentation with Texture

Texture plays a fundamental role in my process. So I'm planning to do a whole intro to drawing bad art lesson and demo about how I use textures as the basis for a piece of artwork.