Painters and sculptors who work in the Realist style imitate natural surfaces and textures. The actual texture of a painting or sculpture may not be at all the same as the "visual texture" that the artist is imitating.

In the detail of this painting, you can see the artist's successful imitation of the surface of a soap bubble. Its "visual texture" appears to be wet and shiny. If you look more closely, you can see the actual texture created by the artist's application of paint.

This artist created nearly perfect visual textures in this painting. For example, the carving above the photograph and the paper on the door create the illusion that the work of art consists of a wooden door with paper glued and nailed onto it.

This artist carved marble to represent the visual texture of a gauzy, transparent veil.

This portrait looks like a photograph, but it's really a painting. A photograph is a record of the actual appearence of things. Notice how carefully the artist has imitated, in paint, the textures found on a face, like whiskers and bumps. This is a great example of an artist's attempt to create visual texture that is almost as good as the real thing!