Hatching and Crosshatching

So far we have explored drawing straight lines, circles, curves, ellipses and spirals. In this fourth article I am going to concentrate on hatching and crosshatching, two essential skills that at first glance seem to be simple ideas that hardly merit involved explanation.

Don’t crosshatch each separate patch of hatching, just crosshatch. The two layers of lines don’t have to be at ninety degrees from one another.

Nothing could be further from the truth, in reality they are the core foundational techniques of shading and toning and if used properly will allow you to go much further into fine detail and represent the different surfaces, textures and effects of light on the various objects and materials that you will find in any subject matter you decide to draw. As I sit here I am thinking of more and more of the subtleties to this aspect of drawing and what it will allow you to do on so many levels. It’s also the starting point for many tricks and techniques that will be described in later articles. For now the best place to start is at the start. Now that you can draw dead straight lines in any direction off both your shoulder and your wrist (See “Drawing Straight Lines”- issue 1-4) you are ready for hatching. The exercise here is to draw