BookConnections › Textures

Texture connections Fur · Lace

Material textures built from the connecting lines - combed fur and a lace net. They're connection styles in the navbar Connecting combo, so any connecting brush can wear them.

What they are

These are connection art-style presets, not separate brushes. Like Classic, Web and Shading, each one is just a set of values for the connecting lines - but tuned with direction and curl so the web reads as a material. Because the mark is made of many faint lines, the texture builds up as you cover an area: think “shade in a region”, not “draw one line”.

Pick them from the navbar Connecting combo (next to the brush), like any other connection style. They use the same connecting controls as every other style - see Memory maps & connecting for every dial.

How to use

Fur

A combed pelt of soft, flowing hairs that lie along a grain direction, sweep the same way, taper to wispy tips and end at staggered lengths. Fill a silhouette and the long guard hairs fray its edges into expressive fur.

A cat drawn with the Fur preset
A cat - hairs comb along the grain, taper to soft tips and fray the edges.

Tip: Length grows long flowing guard hairs, Flow combs them one way and Wave gives lifelike kink; Taper + Fray make the soft, ragged silhouette. Grain angle sets which way the coat lies; raise Density / Weight for a thicker pelt, or drop them for airy down. One limitation - the grain is a single global direction, so fur combs one way and can't follow a body's contours.

Lace

A fine crossing net of floating, dotted scallops (arc connections, a dotted dash, and inset ends so the lines don't pile up on the dots). It's at its best filling a shape with lace.

A round lace mat
A round lace mat (doily).
A landmass shape filled with lace
A landmass “cut” from lace.

Tip: draw an outline and a sparse fill - the lace net forms between the points. You shape the outline; the net itself is emergent, so Lace is for texturing a form, not authoring a specific motif.

The dials behind them

A few dials in Connection art style give these presets their character - surfaced by default when a preset uses them, and there to mix for your own textures:

Curl
Bows the Curve line shape: 0 = straight, 1 = a strong arc.
Grain & Grain angle
Comb the web toward one direction: 0 = an even web, 1 = only lines along the grain survive. Crosshatch grain favours two perpendicular directions at once.
Length
Guard-hair extension: how far each hair reaches past its neighbour. 1 = stop at the dot; higher grows the long flowing hairs that make fur expressive.
Wave
Kinks each hair with a gentle wave so the pelt looks like living hair instead of a flat comb: 0 = smooth sweep, higher = wavier, flicking tips.

See Memory maps & connecting for the full list of connection controls, and Covering bigger areas for Strands, Spread & Dynamics.

Try this For Fur, fill a simple silhouette and let the long guard hairs fray past its edges - that ragged border is what sells it as a creature. For Lace, draw an outline plus a sparse fill and let the dotted net form between the points; set Grain angle to make the coat (or the weave) lie the way you want.