Another art term I use a lot when I am teaching is grain. Grain is used to describe features of lots of kinds of art materials, but I’ll talk about the ones I use the most: paper and fabric.
In paper, the grain is the direction that the paper folds most easily. Papers like origami paper are made to have very little grain, so they fold easily in any direction. But papers like watercolor paper have a really strong grain which means they fold much more easily in one direction than the other. The image above shows the same piece of colored paper folded against the grain on the left and with the grain on the right. You can see how it springs back on the left side and doesn’t want to make that fold. If you were to force it to fold that way, the paper might crack or wrinkle.
In fabric, the grain is the direction that the fabric was woven. When you cut pieces with the grain they fold and drape differently than if you cut opposite the grain, much like paper. It’s easiest to find the grain in fabric by looking at the selvedge or non-cut edge of the fabric. The grain always goes parallel to the selvedge. The felt fabric shown on the right has no grain because the fibers in felt go in every direction.
