Texture Tuesday

September 16, 2008

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Join Wildheart of Wildheart’s Works for this week’s edition of Texture Tuesday. Wildheart is a Paintshop Pro expert, but I know you’ll enjoy the tips and tricks even if you’re not a PaintShop Pro user. And you’ll find plenty of ideas to help you work with textures in your own program.

What is Texture?

Ok so I know I have been going on and on about how to use textures in design without giving a definition first of what texture is. I looked online for what I felt would be a good definition of texture in order that you may have it at your disposal when creating as well as using textures for scrap booking or for any other design project you are embarking on.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary this is what texture is:

1. A structure of interwoven fibers or other elements.

2. The distinctive physical composition or structure of something, especially with respect to the size, shape, and arrangment of its parts: the texture of sandy soil; the texture of cooked fish.

a. The appearance and feel of a surface: the smooth texture of soap.

b. A rough or grainy surface quality: Brick walls give a room texture.

3. Distinctive or identifying quality or character: “an intensely meditative poet [who] conveys the religious and cultural texture of time spent in a Benedictine monastery” (New York Times).

4. The quality given to a piece of art, literature, or music by the interrelationship of its elements: “The baroque influence in his music is clear here, with the harmonic complexity and texture” (Rachelle Roe).
tr.v. tex·tured, tex·tur·ing, tex·tures
To give texture to, especially to impart desirable surface characteristics to: texture a printing plate by lining and stippling it.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin text?ra, from textus, past participle of texere, to weave; see text.]

tex’tur·al adj., tex’tur·al·ly adv., tex’tured adj

In Paint Shop Pro you are able to control the texture of an object using several settings in the effects tool. For definition 1 you can use the combination of the texture effect and weave effect if you want to apply these literally as the definition intends. You can also go on the internet to find free textures to add to your texture file that will give you unique texture effects. You may also want to use the add noise feature to give a design an interesting grainy effect kind of like static on a television.

In the verb usage of this definition it is pretty much straight forward as to what you are really doing when you are working with texture in design. You are adding character to the piece you are working with. This not only applies to digital design but can apply to any area of design and art. I like the old cracked paint texture of antique furniture it really adds a certain charm to the piece and makes you feel like you stepped back into the 1800’s to have breakfast in an Inn somewhere. When you are working with various scrap elements you can mix and match textures to make one item on the page stand out more than another item. You may want to add a bolder texture under a picture to draw attention to that picture more and then use subtle textures to accentuate the piece.

Ideas on how to use textures are endless.

In this weeks piece I want to just show you what I did in combining the texture and weave effect.

I wanted to give it a tight woven feel so I only set the gap size to about 7 or so. Once I start learning how to do 3D animation and art I will be able to show you how you can use a texture like this in a 3D environment