How to Create Your Own Textures
A key component to my fine art work is texture. I add it to almost every image I create for many reasons: to make my work look more filmic, to make it look more painterly, to make it look old, and sometimes as a finishing layer to make it look polished.
There are countless uses for texture and each image calls for something a little different. That’s why it pays off to make your own textures, and it’s super simple! Here are 10 different textures I made in about 20 minutes within a 10 foot radius of my garage!
Materials (all optional):
Paint Brush
Paper
Baby Powder or Flour
Black Cloth
The goal is to create random smears or smudges, splatters, cracks, etc. Any pattern that isn’t discernable is great. You want to avoid too much contrast of light on your texture if possible – even, soft light is best from my experience. Get close to the texture so that it fills your frame. And finally, get creative.
You’ll find yourself looking at things you never noticed before in a whole new way! Here are my textures and the wider shots of where the textures came from!
Want to learn how to edit with textures? I have a whole tutorial about just that right here! On that same page you can also find my texture available for a totally free download.
Share this with any artists you think could benefit!
Happy Creating!
7 thoughts on “How to Create Your Own Textures”
I also love photographing old cookie sheets. I’ve made textures out of falling snow (by shooting up towards the sky), and I have photographed blank canvases too so I can get that painterly effect.
I never thought of a cookie sheet, that is a great idea! But I’m not sure mine are textured enough, I better make some cookies on them first to make sure. 😉
I have some canvas paintings, I should take photos of the backsides of them for textures, thanks for the idea! 🙂
Yes! Baking sheets are the best! It’s also fun to see how ceramic versus metal creates different textures on the sheets
Hello!
So you just take picture of it then? And then turn it black and white?
Best regards ❤️❤️
I really love the baby powder idea, thats one I hadnt thought of. Will be trying it out on different textured backgrounds this week
It is so stupid, I never thought of just painting on some paper for textures! How could I have not thought of that???
I do try and remind myself to look for them as I am out and about.
Nothing ties a composite together like a texture, even a faint texture makes a huge difference in some photo.
I have also used them for making my own cliff faces and such like they do in matte painting.
La verdad es que no se me había ocurrido nunca esta forma de elaborar tus propias texturas. La imaginación al poder