Patterns of Texture and Grain
From a purely formal point of view, texture and grain are the keys to an intriguing pattern. These two facets are the principal manner in which our first perceptions are formed, because these are the broad aspects of a pattern. Once we have registered and understood these two characteristics, we can then look deeper into the pattern for detail. Thus, today will be a showcase of patterns for their texture and grain.
Courtesy of vin60.
This pattern is a basic cellular structure, which makes it very quick to read the overall grain or directionality. The pattern exhibits texture in two ways, it’s color variation and cellular deviation. It is the pattern’s texture against a simple grain that makes it an appealing image to me. It has interesting, yet subtle variations across a rather standard cellular system.
The above text and that below may be over analyzing these images, so feel free to just view the photographs for whatever benefit they offer you. However, not everyone out there has a trained eye, and even those that do may see things differently than I do. The objective then is merely to encourage people to be more perceptive of their environments.
Courtesy of jrosenk.
This pattern is very similar to the first. The grain in this pattern, however, is concentric as you get the overall reading in the background. The texture comes from the roughness of the wood and the change in clarity as the image loses focus beyond.
Courtesy of garageowns.
This pattern is similar as well, but employs a swath with the opposite grain. Another interesting aspect of this pattern is that the grain of the horizontal stone appears more cellular, but the photographers angle to the vertical stone catches the profile of the stone. This blurs the vertical grain without eliminating it and creating a different texture than the horizontal stone.
Courtesy of tracyyxx.
This final pattern is much more complex. It has several grains and textures to become more compositional as a pattern. The simplicity of the pattern in the tile is also a nice juxtaposition to that of the staircase, shadows, and banister. It’s also nice to view this image in black and white, because color can severely alter our perception. Which is not always bad, I would refer you to the first one and I think it works quite well there.
All four of these exhibit very specific grains, but their textures are a result of many different factors. There are limitless ways we can look at each these individually and as a group, but I reiterate from my introduction to patterns that I use photographs to understand patterns and develop my ability to understand them.
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