The best examples of creating textures with pastels: 3 practical examples you can try today

Let’s start with a texture almost everyone wants to master: soft, believable fur. When people look for examples of creating textures with pastels: 3 practical examples, this is usually at the top of the wish list. Think of a golden retriever’s coat, a fluffy kitten, or the delicate edges of an owl’s feathers.

The secret isn’t one magic stroke; it’s a combination of layering, direction, and restraint.

Begin with a mid-tone base. If you’re drawing a brown dog, lightly block in a warm mid-brown over the whole fur area using the side of a soft pastel. Keep it loose and slightly patchy so the paper still shows through. This base acts like the undercoat of fur.

Next, establish shadow clumps rather than individual hairs. Use a slightly darker brown or even a cool dark violet in the shadowed areas: under the chin, behind the ears, and where the legs overlap the body. Work in the direction the fur grows—over the curve of the skull, down the neck, wrapping around the ribcage. These directional strokes are one of the best examples of how your hand movement directly creates texture.

Once you have those shadow clumps, start suggesting hair, not drawing every single strand. Switch to pastel pencils or the edge of a harder pastel stick. Pull short, broken strokes from dark into light, always following the curve of the body. Leave gaps; those tiny breaks are what make the fur look airy instead of plastic.

On the light side, add just a few high-value strokes. For a golden retriever, a creamy yellow or warm off-white works well. Place them sparingly on the bridge of the nose, the top of the head, and the rim of the ears where light hits most strongly. This is where many beginners learn an important lesson from real examples: less is more. Over-detailing every area flattens the fur.

Feathers work similarly but in larger, more organized groups. For an owl, start with broad, soft blocks of color for the wing and chest. Then, use pastel pencils to define only a few edges of overlapping feathers. A few crisp lines at the wing tip and around the facial disc, contrasted with softer blending on the chest, give a convincing feather texture without drawing every barb.

If you want to study how light affects fur and feathers in a more scientific way, resources on light and vision from places like the National Institutes of Health can be surprisingly helpful for understanding why certain highlights look more realistic.

Examples of creating textures with pastels: rough bark and stone

The second of our examples of creating textures with pastels: 3 practical examples focuses on hard, irregular surfaces: tree bark, stone walls, and rocky cliffs. These are perfect examples of textures where you can be loose and expressive without losing realism.

Start with the tree bark. Instead of drawing every crack, think in vertical bands. Lay down a base layer in broad strokes: a cool gray-brown for the shadowed side of the trunk, a warmer brown for the lit side. Don’t worry about details yet; just separate light from shadow.

Now, use the side of a harder pastel stick and lightly drag it over the paper in vertical, broken strokes. Turn your wrist slightly so the pastel catches only the higher parts of the paper’s tooth. This creates a natural bark-like pattern almost automatically. This dragging technique is one of the best examples of letting the paper do half the work.

To deepen the cracks, use a dark pastel pencil or the corner of a dark stick. Instead of drawing long continuous lines, tap in short, staggered marks where shadow would collect—under peeling bark, in the center of grooves, or where two branches meet. Vary the direction slightly to avoid a striped look.

For stone walls or cliffs, think in blocks and planes. Start with irregular shapes, almost like puzzle pieces, in a range of grays, browns, and muted blues. Soften the edges between some stones using your finger or a blending stump, but leave other edges crisp. That contrast between sharp and soft edges is a powerful example of how you can create the illusion of chipped, weathered rock.

To add moss or lichen, lightly scumble a muted green or yellow-green over parts of the stone. Scumbling means barely touching the surface with the side of the pastel so the color skips over the texture underneath. This is one of the clearest examples of creating textures with pastels: 3 practical examples where a simple motion completely changes the surface quality.

If you like researching natural textures, geology and tree anatomy resources from universities, such as the USGS education pages or forestry departments at major universities (for example, Oregon State University’s forestry extension), can give you great reference ideas for bark patterns and rock formations.

Third of the 3 practical examples: water and reflective surfaces

The third of our examples of creating textures with pastels: 3 practical examples tackles something that seems slippery—literally. Water, glass, and metal don’t have texture in the same way bark or fur do, but their reflections and distortions create a visual texture that’s just as interesting.

For calm water, think horizontal. Begin with a smooth gradient from dark at the bottom of the water area to lighter near the horizon. Use blues, blue-greens, and a touch of the sky color. Blend this gently with a finger or soft cloth until you have a silky transition.

Now, add reflections. If there’s a tree on the bank, pull its colors straight down into the water with vertical strokes. Then, very lightly drag a horizontal light pastel over those verticals. This breaks them up and instantly gives the look of ripples catching the light. This combination of vertical then horizontal strokes is a textbook example of creating textures with pastels through stroke direction rather than heavy detail.

For more choppy water, skip the smooth blending. Lay down overlapping short strokes in different blues and greens, then add streaks of lighter color where the light hits the tops of waves. Resist the urge to outline waves; instead, think in patches of value.

Glass and metal are all about sharp contrasts. Take a simple glass bottle. Start by blocking in the background color behind the bottle. Then, add the bottle shape using very soft, blended mid-tones—muted blues, greens, or grays. Inside that shape, place a few hard-edged highlights with a very light pastel. These should be crisp, irregular stripes or spots where the light is strongest. The rest of the bottle can stay surprisingly simple.

With metal, push the contrast even more. A silver spoon, for example, might have areas that are nearly black right next to pure white highlights. Pastels are perfect for this, because you can layer darks and then carve out those highlights with a sharp white pastel pencil. These high-contrast reflections are some of the best examples of how texture can be implied by light alone.

For a deeper understanding of how reflections work, art and design programs at universities (such as RISD’s resources for students or general drawing guides from institutions like The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s educational materials) can help you study how artists have handled water and glass over centuries.

More real examples of creating textures with pastels in everyday subjects

Beyond the main examples of creating textures with pastels: 3 practical examples, it helps to see how these ideas show up in simpler, everyday scenes. Here are a few real examples you can practice in a sketchbook session:

Think about weathered denim. Start with a mid-blue block-in for jeans. Then, use small, broken strokes of lighter blue and off-white across the knees and thighs where fabric wears out. Add a few darker blue strokes in the seams and folds. The mix of soft blending in the broader areas with sharper strokes along seams gives that familiar worn texture.

Consider a wooden tabletop. Lay down a warm brown base and then pull long, slightly wavy strokes of a slightly darker brown across the surface to suggest wood grain. Add a few knots by circling in darker ovals and blending their edges. This is another quiet example of creating textures with pastels where you rely on repeated patterns and value shifts.

Look at short grass in a backyard. Instead of drawing every blade, start with a soft, mottled layer of yellow-green and mid-green. Then, in the foreground only, pull a few more defined upward strokes with a sharper pastel or pastel pencil. Let the background stay soft and blurry. This depth cue—sharp in front, soft in back—is one of the best examples of how you can suggest a texture without overworking the whole area.

Even skin can be treated as a texture. In portraits, avoid perfectly flat skin tones. Layer warm and cool colors—peach, light ocher, a touch of cool violet in the shadows—and blend gently. Then, add only a few sharper edges around features like the nose, lips, and eyes. The contrast between blended areas and sharper edges gives skin a natural, living texture.

If you’re concerned about working safely with dusty media like soft pastels, you can read up on art material safety through health-oriented resources such as NIH or general health information from Mayo Clinic. Good ventilation and basic hygiene (like washing hands after a session) keep your pastel practice comfortable.

How to practice these 3 practical examples without getting overwhelmed

A lot of artists see the best examples of pastel textures online and assume they need hours and a full studio setup. You don’t. You can practice all three of these examples of creating textures with pastels: 3 practical examples in short, focused sessions.

Break your paper into small rectangles, like a sheet of thumbnails. In one box, try fur: a simple oval for a cat’s head with layered strokes following the form. In another, try bark: vertical dragging, dark cracks, and a bit of moss scumbling. In a third, practice water: smooth gradient, vertical reflections, horizontal ripples.

Keep each study under 20–30 minutes. The goal is not a finished artwork; it’s a small library of textures you can refer back to. Over time, these studies become your own personal set of real examples, tailored to your style and favorite subjects.

And remember, even professional artists constantly return to basics. Many art departments and community colleges encourage this kind of focused texture study in their drawing and painting courses, and continuing education programs listed on sites like ed.gov can be a good way to find local classes if you want in-person feedback.

FAQ: real examples of creating textures with pastels

Q: What are some simple examples of creating textures with pastels for beginners?
Soft animal fur, tree bark, worn denim, and short grass are great starting points. Each one lets you explore a different combination of strokes, pressure, and blending without needing a perfect drawing. These are often the best examples to practice before moving on to complex scenes.

Q: Can you give an example of using only three colors to create texture?
Yes. Take a gray stone. Use a mid-gray for the base, a darker gray for cracks and shadows, and an off-white for highlights. Vary your pressure and use broken strokes instead of solid fills. The texture comes from how you use the three colors, not how many you have.

Q: How do I avoid over-blending and losing texture?
Decide in advance where you want softness and where you want crisp detail. Blend only in the soft areas (like sky or distant water) and leave your strokes more visible in textured areas (like bark or fur). Many of the best examples of pastel texture show a mix of blended and unblended passages.

Q: Are pastel pencils better than soft sticks for texture?
They’re different tools. Soft sticks are wonderful for broad, expressive textures and quick coverage. Pastel pencils shine when you need sharper, controlled marks, like whiskers, bark cracks, or tiny highlights on metal. Most artists use a mix of both when working through real examples of creating textures with pastels.

Q: How can I study more examples of pastel textures from other artists?
Look for pastel societies, museum collections, and art school galleries online. Many universities and museums share high-resolution images of pastel works, which are excellent examples of how artists handle fur, fabric, and landscapes.

If you keep these examples of creating textures with pastels: 3 practical examples in mind—soft fur and feathers, rough bark and stone, and reflective water and glass—you’ll start to see every subject as a collection of textures you already know how to handle. That’s when pastel drawing stops feeling mysterious and starts feeling like play.