18- Visual Texture

Visual Texture is a lie. This very clever trick is something you can do to fool the eye into thinking texture is there where none actually exists. Most still pictures have to rely on Visual Texture. I pulled an example from the book (p.165) since it is a painting I have always liked.

Max Ernst, who created The Eye of Silence tricked us visually by using his pigments and colors well. The mossy structure of this very odd architecture looks so realistic, you think you could touch the painting and pull your hand back wet and cool as if you had slid your hand along the vegetation.