Wood is quite a useful fundamental for pixel art so I figured many pixel artists could benefit from a tutorial covering the topic. It exists in trees, bridges, scaffolds, pillars, weapons, tools, etc. so if you plan to draw these things, you have to know how to draw wood first.
Appearance
Wood texture in general, has lines. The lines are mostly parallel but wiggly, although the one in the top right of the image above is an exception. For the sake of this tutorial we're focusing on wood with the wiggly parallel lines. Also occasionally found on wood are ellipse or oval looking shapes that come from the knots. So knowing this, we can start drawing some wood texture.
So this is alright, you can see that the line work is there, but the texture is looking a little plain. Let's try adding another shade of brown. Within the lines, sprinkle a bit of dark brown pixels randomly into them.
Already looking pretty polished so lets try this out on other things to see if this works!
Whoa! Who could've guessed that wood texture looks great on wooden objects?
Things to watch out for
Just be careful not to overdo it or try to scribble the different shades of wood texture in randomly or it can look too noisy like termites got to it, such as this bench.
The reason why this looks horrible is because colors are randomly scribbled onto the bench.
Solution
Don't scribble, think.
Start simple, benches have planks right? Start with that, don't need the other stuff.
So pretend that's a plank for now. Now what? Well hopefully I already taught you how to draw wood texture at the beginning of this tutorial. Apply that knowledge to this plank. Draw some lines.
Because the plank resolution is so small, it's hard to see that they are supposed to be going in the same general direction but they are. Now add the darker shade.
Here's what NOT to do. This is what causes that dented look.
Imagine the texture linework as a gradient, it's supposed to have smooth color transitions like this unless termites got to it or something.
Anywhere you have the colors have an abrupt transition like this (along the texture lines) will cause that termite look.
More bad examples:
I want to make it very clear that it's OK to have this pixel transition on your wood texture, I'm just referring to the lines you use to draw the texture.
Avoid making that mistake and you should be good texturing wood from now on.
Anyway continuing on to that plank from earlier, you should have something smooth looking like this, which is good.
Last thing I want to say is that wood texture isn't always necessary if the viewer is given enough context. What do I mean? Look at these examples, they're the same examples from earlier but without the texture or at least most of it removed.
Sometimes all you need is just the right amount of context to get the idea across. The tree trunk still has to keep a decent amount of texture because it's how we recognize tree trunks visually for the most part, but other things like the barrel, chest, and bench, already have enough other details that give us the idea that it is what it's supposed to be.
Anyway 🤔 I think that's all I have to say for today's tutorial. 👋
Other tutorials: