New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Crosshatching a lighter shadowBefore we advance to the next drawing, your self-portrait, I wantto show you how to "crosshatch." This is a technical term for creatinga variety of tones or values in a drawing by laying down asort of "carpet" of pencil strokes, often crossing the strokes atangles. Figure 10-14 is an example of a tonal drawing built almostentirely of crosshatches. I'll also review the proportions of thehead in frontal view and in three-quarter view.In former years, I thought that crosshatching was a naturalactivity, not requiring teaching. Apparently, this is not the case.The technique must be taught and must be learned. In fact, I nowbelieve that the ability to Crosshatch is a mark of a trained artist.If you glance through this book at the many reproductions, youwill see that almost every drawing has some area of hatching. Youwill also notice that crosshatching has almost as many forms asthere are artists to use them. Each artist, it seems, develops a personalstyle of hatching, almost a "signature," and, very quickly, sowill you.At this point, I will show you the technique and a few of thetraditional styles of hatching. You will need paper and a carefullysharpened pencil.1. Hold your pencil firmly and make a group of parallel marks,called a "set" (shown in Figure 10-15), by placing the pencilpoint down firmly, fingers extended. Swing off each mark bymoving the whole hand from the wrist. The wrist remains stationaryand the fingers pull the pencil back just a bit for eachsuccessive hatch. When you have finished one "set" of eight toten hatch marks, move your hand and wrist to a new positionand hatch a new set. Try swinging the mark toward you, andalso try swinging it away from you in an outward movementto see which seems more natural for you. Try changing theangle of the marks.2. Practice making sets until you have found the direction, spacing,and length of marks that seem right for you.3. The next step is to make the "cross" sets. In classical hatching,the cross set is made at an angle only slightly different fromFig. 10-14.THE VALUE OF LOGICAL LIGHTS AND .SHADOWS2O7