Twelve wonderful, rich, veiny leaf textures from nature’s most beautifully asymmetric imperfection.
While the structured world of geometric pattern textures certainly has its appeal, I’ve always loved the magic of nature’s imperfection, reflected all the more powerfully in the gritty, up-close-and-personal context of textures.
Here are 12 interesting leaf textures that capture that magic.
You’re browsing in quick-glance gallery view — click the post permalink for a larger view of the textures, more detail on each, and to download the full-size version of individual ones if you don’t want the whole pack.
First up, one of my all-time favorite textures: The amazing contrast in this half-dry, half-green leaf is such a living metaphor for the line between life and death:
Another, admittedly less powerful, shot of it:
I found this gorgeously destroyed trampled-on leaf on the steps of my local Whole Foods:
This is easily the one that got me into shooting textures. Unfortunately, it was back in the day before I had a good camera, so it’s a little lower-res than my usual:
You may recall these from the Organic Matter texture pack: A rained-on grapevine leaf from a Nappa Valley vineyard…
…and a close-up of its veiny underside:
Another underside, this time of a ficus leaf. The painted effect is completely natural, no retouching.
Speaking of ficus, I noticed the same plant eerily and magically backlit by the sun one day — these incredibly saturated, high-contrast shots are completely in-camera:
Another old favorite from the Organic Matter texture pack:
I loved the wonderful imperfections on the textured underside of this leaf: a playful “peeping hole”…
…and some gorgeous “age spots” and coloration specks:
Thanks for stopping by — if you enjoyed this, you may wanna check out the Aerial Foliage mini-pack. Be sure to grab our RSS feed and get fresh textures as soon as they’re up. And comment away with any raves, rants, or just to say “Hey”.
Download the pack: TextureWell Leaf Texture Pack
