How Do You Add Wood Texture in Illustrator?

You can create a realistic wood texture in Adobe Illustrator using a combination of shapes, colors, and graphic effects. This process involves building the texture from basic elements and applying filters to achieve the wood grain look.

Here's a straightforward method based on foundational techniques:

Creating a Basic Wood Grain Texture

This method involves creating the core elements of wood grain manually using simple shapes and effects.

Step-by-Step Process

Based on common techniques like those found in tutorials such as the Design Bundles guide on creating wood texture, here are the key steps:

1. Step 1 - Make a Square With the Rectangle Tool.

   • Start by selecting the Rectangle Tool (M).
   • Click and drag on your artboard while holding Shift to create a perfect square. This shape will serve as the base for your wood plank.

2. Step 2 - Fill the Square With a Medium Brown Color.

   • With the square selected, open the Swatches panel or Color Picker.
   • Choose a medium brown color that you want for the main color of your wood.
   • Ensure the stroke is set to 'None'.

3. Step 3 - Duplicate the Square and Make It a Long Thin Rectangle.

   • Select the brown square.
   • Duplicate it. You can do this by dragging it while holding Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac), or by using Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V (Copy/Paste).
   • Resize this new shape to be a long, thin rectangle. This rectangle will be used to generate the wood grain lines. It's often helpful to make this rectangle a lighter or darker color, perhaps grey, to distinguish it and make the graphic pen effect more visible in the next step. Note: The reference specifically mentions applying the effect to a "Grey Rectangle," suggesting this duplicate should be colored grey.

4. Step 4 - Apply a Graphic Pen Effect to the Grey Rectangle.

   • Select the long, thin, grey rectangle.
   • Go to Effect > Sketch > Graphic Pen.
   • Experiment with the settings (Stroke Length, Light/Dark Balance, Stroke Direction) within the Graphic Pen options to create wavy, linear patterns that resemble wood grain. The stroke direction is crucial for the orientation of the grain.

5. Step 5 - Expand Appearance on the Rectangle.

   • With the effect applied rectangle selected, go to Object > Expand Appearance.
   • This step converts the live effect into editable vector paths. The wavy lines created by the Graphic Pen effect are now actual shapes. This allows you to further manipulate them, such as coloring them or using them as masks.

Refining the Texture

After expanding the appearance, you have vector lines representing the grain. You can then:

• Color these lines a darker or lighter brown than your base square.
• Position the grain lines over your brown square.
• Use techniques like Clipping Masks or Opacity Masks to blend the grain lines into the base color or create variations in the texture.
• Duplicate the base square and grain layers to create multiple planks.
• Add subtle variations in color, rotation, and position for realism.

Using Swatches

Once you've created a satisfactory wood texture, you can turn it into a pattern swatch:

1. Select all the elements that make up your wood plank (base color, grain lines, etc.).
2. Go to Object > Pattern > Make.
3. Adjust tiling options in the Pattern Options panel.
4. Click Done or `` when finished.

Your new wood pattern swatch will appear in the Swatches panel, ready to be applied as a fill to any shape.