Hand Drawing Number Three
17th January 2006
This drawing is a kind of practice of hatching.
Hatching is as old as the hills, and involves describing tone by overlapping lines running in different directions, crossing over each other. The more layers of lines the darker the tone. My hatching isn't all that neat. On some old master drawings you can see that they expended a great deal of energy on making sure the lines all follow the same contour. Done like this, hatching can be used to show the shape of a form as well as tone.
I guess I need a bit more practice with this because the hatching on this drawing is messy. Then again it always was, not enough patience. I recently bought a book of old master portraits, some of the hatching on those drawings is really well done. As soon as I get my arse into gear, I'll copy a couple to study how they did it.