Drawing Textures and Materials

How do you make a drawing feel like wood, glass, metal or fur? Texture is mostly about two things: how a surface reflects light and what small marks you use to suggest its details. You never draw every hair or every grain of sand; you suggest them.

Texture starts with form and value

Before texture, get the form and the big values right. Texture is the last layer, applied on top of a solid light-and-shadow structure. A furry ball is still a sphere with a light side and a shadow side.

Reflective vs. matte surfaces

• Matte surfaces (paper, unpolished wood, chalk) scatter light: soft gradients, small or no highlights.
• Glossy surfaces (plastic, ceramic, wet skin): sharp, bright highlights on top of a normal value pattern.
• Mirror-like surfaces (chrome, polished metal): they reflect their surroundings. Expect high contrast, sharp edges, dark and light bands, and very little "own" value.

Recipes for common materials

• Wood: draw the grain as long, flowing lines that follow the form, with occasional knots. Keep lines darker in the shadow.
• Metal: strong contrast, abrupt jumps from very light to very dark, reflections of the horizon (a light band over a dark band).
• Glass: mostly the background seen through it, slightly distorted, plus sharp highlights and dark edges where the glass is thickest.
• Fur and hair: work in clumps, not individual hairs. Shade the mass, then add a few strands at the edges and in the halftone, following the direction of growth.
• Fabric: soft value transitions and folds (see the folds lesson); add texture like knit or denim only at the focal point.
• Stone and bark: irregular, broken lines and dots; cracks drawn as dark lines with a light edge next to them.

Tools for texture

• Indenting: press lines into the paper with a blunt stylus before shading; they stay white (great for whiskers or fine hairs).
• Eraser lifting: draw light textures into a tone with a kneaded eraser.
• Frottage: put paper on a textured surface and rub graphite over it.
• Varied marks: stippling, scribbling, short dashes (see hatching).