Top 16 'Glitch-and-Grain' Art Styles to Explore for Digital Painters Craving a Tactile Look in 2025 - Goh Ling Yong
In a world of pixel-perfect renders and infinitely scalable vectors, there's a growing, almost rebellious, craving for something more... human. We scroll past flawless gradients and razor-sharp lines, yet our eyes linger on the art that feels tangible, a bit broken, and beautifully imperfect. The digital canvas, once celebrated for its pristine nature, is now a playground for artists seeking to reclaim the texture, warmth, and happy accidents of the analog world.
This movement has a name, a feeling, a vibe: 'Glitch-and-Grain.' It's the electrifying marriage of digital decay and analog texture. It’s the visual equivalent of a vinyl record playing on a flickering CRT monitor—a nostalgic hum, a satisfying grit, a story told through imperfection. It’s about making your digital paintings feel less like they were created on a machine and more like they were discovered in a forgotten attic or transmitted from a distant future.
For digital painters looking ahead to 2025, mastering these styles isn't just about following a trend; it's about expanding your emotional toolkit. It's about learning a new language of texture and error to convey mood, depth, and narrative. So, grab your stylus, fire up your favorite art software, and let's dive into the 16 essential 'glitch-and-grain' styles that will add a tactile soul to your digital work.
1. Chromatic Aberration Pop
What it is: Chromatic Aberration is that retro, 3D-without-the-glasses effect where the color channels (Red, Green, and Blue) of an image are slightly misaligned. This creates colorful fringes around the edges of objects, mimicking the look of a low-quality lens or an old-school monitor. It's a foundational glitch effect that instantly adds a vintage, lo-fi energy.
Why you'll love it: This style is incredibly versatile. A subtle shift can add a dreamy, ethereal quality to a portrait, making it feel like a memory. A more aggressive separation can create a high-energy, disorienting effect perfect for sci-fi scenes, concert posters, or expressing a sense of chaos and digital breakdown. It’s the fastest way to break the "flat" feeling of a digital image.
How to get the look: In Photoshop, duplicate your art layer twice. On each of the top two layers, go to Blending Options and uncheck two of the three RGB channels (e.g., uncheck G and B on one, R and B on the other). Then, use the move tool to nudge these layers a few pixels apart. Voila! Instant retro-futurism.
2. Classic Film Grain & Noise
What it is: The quintessential 'grain' effect. This style emulates the texture of traditional photographic film, which is caused by small metallic silver particles. In the digital world, we replicate this with noise filters or overlays, adding a fine, randomized speckle across the entire image.
Why you'll love it: Grain is the ultimate unifier. It softens harsh digital gradients, ties disparate elements together, and adds an immediate sense of warmth and nostalgia. It can make a piece feel cinematic, intimate, or aged. A fine grain suggests a high-quality film stock, while a coarse, heavy grain can evoke a gritty, documentary-style realism.
How to get the look: Most art software has a built-in "Add Noise" filter (use "Monochromatic" to avoid rainbow speckles). For more control and realism, use a high-resolution film grain overlay image (search for "4K film grain") and set its layer blend mode to "Overlay" or "Soft Light," then adjust the opacity.
3. Risograph & Halftone Texture
What it is: This style mimics the look of a Risograph, a printer beloved by indie artists for its vibrant, soy-based inks and characteristic imperfections. The key elements are a distinct, dot-based halftone grain, slight misalignments between color layers, and a limited, punchy color palette.
Why you'll love it: Risograph emulation forces you to be creative with color and texture. The limited palette challenges your composition, while the halftone grain adds an incredible tactile quality that feels both retro and modern. It's perfect for zines, posters, and illustrations that need a bold, graphic, and slightly raw feel.
How to get the look: Work with a limited palette of 2-4 colors on separate layers. In Photoshop, you can convert each color layer to a bitmap (Image > Mode > Bitmap) using a halftone screen setting. Then, bring them back into your main RGB document, colorize them, and set their blend modes to "Multiply." Nudge them slightly for that authentic misalignment.
4. Databending & Datamoshing Emulation
What it is: True databending involves opening an image file in a text or audio editor and "breaking" the code, creating unpredictable glitches. Datamoshing refers to video compression errors that smear pixels across frames. In digital painting, we emulate these chaotic, blocky, and beautifully broken effects using filters and manual manipulation.
Why you'll love it: This is the heart of pure, chaotic glitch art. It’s about surrendering control and embracing the unpredictable. The resulting smears, blocky artifacts, and color corruptions can be used to represent memory loss, data overload, system failure, or just to create stunningly complex abstract textures.
How to get the look: The "Wave" and "Shear" filters in Photoshop are great starting points. For a classic datamosh look, select a rectangular area, copy it, and paste it elsewhere, or use the marquee tool to offset a section of your painting. Experiment with the "Pixelate" > "Mosaic" filter to create compression blocks.
5. Scanline & CRT Simulation
What it is: This style is all about replicating the look of old Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitors—the kind that powered arcade games and desktop computers of the 80s and 90s. The defining features are faint horizontal lines (scanlines), a subtle screen-door grid, and a gentle vignette or barrel distortion around the edges.
Why you'll love it: Instant nostalgia. Adding scanlines immediately transports the viewer to another era. It's perfect for art inspired by retro video games, early computer interfaces, or anything aiming for a "found footage" or analog horror aesthetic. It grounds futuristic concepts in a familiar, older technology.
How to get the look: Create a new layer and fill it with a pattern of one-pixel-thick black horizontal lines, with one pixel of transparency in between. Set this layer's blend mode to "Overlay" or "Soft Light" and lower the opacity until it's barely visible. Add a subtle curve to the whole image with the "Spherize" filter for that classic screen bulge.
6. Dust, Scratches & Light Leaks
What it is: Moving beyond simple grain, this style involves layering textures that represent physical damage and imperfection. Think of the dust specs on an old vinyl record, the vertical scratches on a worn film reel, or the orange-red "light leaks" that happen when a film camera is accidentally opened.
Why you'll love it: These elements tell a story. They suggest the artwork is a physical artifact with a history. A scratch implies it has survived something; dust implies it has been waiting to be discovered. Light leaks add a warm, accidental, and often beautiful blast of color that can enhance a composition.
How to get the look: Find high-contrast stock images of dust and scratch textures. Place them over your artwork, set the layer blend mode to "Screen" (for white imperfections) or "Multiply" (for dark ones), and adjust the opacity. Light leak overlays work best with "Screen" or "Lighten" blend modes.
7. Pixel Sorting
What it is: An algorithmic art form where the pixels in an image are reorganized based on certain criteria, like brightness or color. This often results in stunning visual effects where parts of the image seem to "drip" or "smear" in a structured, yet chaotic, way.
Why you'll love it: Pixel sorting creates a unique blend of organic flow and digital structure. It can look like wind sweeping through a scene, data bleeding from a screen, or fabric unraveling. It’s an incredibly powerful tool for adding dynamic movement and a touch of elegant, high-tech decay.
How to get the look: While there are dedicated programs and scripts (like Processing) for true pixel sorting, you can emulate it in Photoshop. Make a thin vertical or horizontal selection. Go to Filter > Stylize > Wind. Set the method to "Stagger" or "Blast" and repeat the filter multiple times (Ctrl+F/Cmd+F). Do this in various parts of your image for a complex effect.
8. Analog Glitch Fusion
What it is: This is where the two sides of our trend truly merge. Analog Glitch Fusion is the practice of layering distinct digital glitches (like chromatic aberration or datamoshing) on top of physical grain and texture (like paper, film grain, or dust). It's the best of both worlds.
Why you'll love it: This approach creates unparalleled depth and complexity. The clean, sharp lines of a digital glitch contrasted with the soft, organic nature of a paper texture create a fascinating visual tension. It tells a story of a digital file being displayed on a physical, imperfect medium. Here at the Goh Ling Yong blog, we see this as one of the most exciting frontiers for digital artists.
How to get the look: Start with a base painting. Add a paper or canvas texture overlay on "Multiply" or "Overlay." Then, on top of that, create your glitch effects on separate layers—perhaps an RGB split that only affects the main subject. The key is to layer digital and analog imperfections thoughtfully.
9. Paper & Canvas Texture Overlays
What it is: The most fundamental way to add a tactile look. This involves placing a high-resolution scan of paper, watercolor paper, canvas, or even cardboard over your digital painting to simulate a physical medium.
Why you'll love it: It breaks the digital smoothness and instantly makes your art feel more traditional and grounded. The subtle texture can catch light in interesting ways, absorb color, and give your brushstrokes a physical tooth to grab onto. It’s the difference between a photo of a painting and the painting itself.
How to get the look: Find a high-quality texture image. Place it as the top layer of your artwork. Experiment with blend modes: "Multiply" will darken your image and make the texture prominent, "Overlay" will blend it in more naturally, and "Soft Light" is perfect for a very subtle effect.
10. Glitch Portraiture
What it is: Applying glitch and grain techniques specifically to portraits to enhance emotion and narrative. A face can be fractured by pixel sorting, obscured by scanlines, or have its colors split to represent an inner state.
Why you'll love it: The human face is our primary canvas for emotion. By disrupting it with glitches, you can express complex ideas that are hard to capture with realism alone. A datamosh smear can represent a fading memory; a sharp RGB split can signify inner conflict or a connection to technology.
How to get the look: Isolate the subject's face or specific features. Apply effects like the Wave filter, channel splitting, or pixelation only to these areas. Contrast a heavily glitched part of the portrait with a clear, detailed area (like one eye) to create a powerful focal point.
11. JPEG Compression Artifacts
What it is: Intentionally saving an image as a low-quality JPEG over and over again to generate its characteristic blocky, noisy artifacts. It’s a celebration of the "ugliness" of data loss, turning digital decay into a deliberate stylistic choice.
Why you'll love it: This style has a very specific "early internet" or "heavily-circulated meme" feel. It speaks to ideas of data degradation, authenticity, and the way images lose quality as they are shared. It can give your work a raw, gritty, and almost forbidden look.
How to get the look: The most authentic way is to do it for real: save your image as a JPEG at a very low quality setting (e.g., 1 or 2 out of 12 in Photoshop). Open that new file, and save it again. Repeat until you achieve the desired level of degradation. You can also simulate it with mosaic and noise filters for more control.
12. Vaporwave & Aesthetic Glitch
What it is: Less of a single technique and more of a complete aesthetic movement. Vaporwave combines 90s internet imagery, classical statues, cyberpunk tropes, and Japanese characters with a heavy dose of glitch, grain, and CRT effects. The color palette is often heavy on pinks, teals, and purples.
Why you'll love it: It’s a whole vibe. Creating in this style allows you to tap into a rich cultural language of nostalgia, anti-consumerism, and surrealism. The grain and glitch aren't just for texture; they are essential to the aesthetic's commentary on technology and memory.
How to get the look: Combine your core subject (e.g., a bust of Helios) with retro-tech elements (like a Windows 95 UI). Apply heavy chromatic aberration, add scanlines, and overlay a fine film grain. Use a soft, neon glow effect on text and key elements.
13. Concrete & Grunge Textures
What it is: Using high-resolution photos of rough, urban surfaces like cracked concrete, peeling paint, rust, or stained metal as texture overlays. This pushes the 'grain' concept into a much grittier, more aggressive territory.
Why you'll love it: This is how you add serious attitude and history to a piece. A grunge texture can make a clean illustration feel like it was painted on a forgotten city wall. It’s perfect for punk-inspired designs, dystopian scenes, and any art that needs to feel weathered and raw.
How to get the look: Use photos of textures as overlays. The "Overlay," "Soft Light," and "Hard Light" blend modes are your best friends here. Use layer masks to "paint" the texture onto specific areas, making it look like the underlying art is peeling or worn away.
14. Glitchy Anaglyph
What it is: This is Chromatic Aberration turned up to eleven. Anaglyph is the classic red-and-cyan 3D effect. In this style, you take that concept but push it further by not just shifting the color channels, but also slightly distorting, rotating, or scaling them to create a more jarring and complex visual.
Why you'll love it: It’s a high-impact, attention-grabbing effect. It feels chaotic, energetic, and slightly nauseating in the best possible way. It’s ideal for depicting supernatural events, psychological distress, or the sensory overload of a cyberpunk city.
How to get the look: Separate your image into Red and Cyan/Blue channels on different layers. Instead of just nudging them, try applying a "Ripple" or "Wave" filter to one, or using the transform tool (Ctrl+T/Cmd+T) to rotate or skew one channel by a tiny amount before recombining them.
15. Abstract Texture Fields
What it is: Art where the glitch and grain are the subject. Instead of applying these effects to a portrait or landscape, you build the entire piece out of layers of noise, glitched-out color blocks, distorted patterns, and gritty textures. It’s pure, non-representational expression.
Why you'll love it: It’s an exercise in pure composition, color theory, and texture. It allows you to explore the inherent beauty of digital noise and analog grit without being tied to a specific subject. These pieces can be incredibly atmospheric and emotionally resonant. I've seen some artists, even those as skilled in realism as Goh Ling Yong, use these abstract fields as backgrounds to add incredible mood to their character pieces.
How to get the look: Start with gradients, solid color blocks, or simple patterns. Now, go wild. Use every technique on this list—pixel sorting, datamoshing, noise filters, grunge overlays—on different layers. Focus on how the textures and colors interact, building up complexity until you have a compelling abstract piece.
16. Kinetic Glitch (for Animation)
What it is: Applying these static effects in a time-based medium, like a GIF or short video. The grain isn't still; it "boils" and shifts with every frame. The glitches aren't frozen; they flicker and jump across the screen.
Why you'll love it: It brings your art to life. A kinetic grain makes a still image feel like a forgotten film loop. A flickering glitch effect can be timed to music or used to add a sudden, jarring moment to an animation. It’s the ultimate way to make your digital work feel like a living, breathing artifact.
How to get the look: In animation software or Photoshop's timeline, apply your noise or texture overlays as separate video layers. If you use a film grain video file, it will move naturally. For glitches, make them appear only for one or two frames to create a subliminal, jumpy effect.
Embrace the Beautifully Broken
The digital canvas is no longer a pristine, sterile window. It’s a living surface, ready to be scratched, stained, warped, and infused with the ghosts of older technologies. The 'Glitch-and-Grain' movement is a powerful reminder that perfection is often less interesting than character.
By exploring these 16 styles, you’re not just adding texture; you’re adding history, emotion, and a tangible soul to your pixels. So don't be afraid to break things. Corrupt a file, crank up the noise, and layer on the grit. The most exciting frontier in digital art might just be found in the beauty of its imperfections.
Which of these styles are you most excited to experiment with? Do you have a favorite technique for adding texture that we missed? Share your thoughts and your 'glitch-and-grain' creations in the comments below
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
Stay updated with the latest posts and insights by following on your favorite platform!