Everything, including works of art, has a texture or surface. Texture can be rough, bumpy, slick, scratchy, smooth, silky, soft, prickly, the list is endless. In this section you'll examine the actual texture of works of art, and discover how artists create the illusion of texture with paint, wood, stone and clay. You'll also see how differences in texture can be used to create the illusion of space.

Works of art have a variety of actual textures created by the artist's choice of materials and how they are handled. The actual texture of this oil painting is quite rough and bumpy.

You can see how the artist applies color with short, choppy brushstrokes to create the rough texture.

The actual surface of this sculpture is hard, cold, and smooth. It's made of marble!

The surface of this clay jar consists of rows of pointy bumps. So its surface feels rough to the hand.

In this granite sculpture, the large part of the bottom of the nearest column and at the top of the column in the background is rough and rocky, while the narrow parts of the two columns are smooth and polished.

The lizard perched on the side of this drum has a coarse, scaly texture. The top and bottom of the drum are smooth.

This garden bench is made of three different materials, each with its own texture: a highly polished vertical granite anchor, the horizontal slab of cedar, and a roughly textured unfinished green rock called basalt.