Hand Drawing Number Three

posted 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 differentdirections, crossing over each other. The more layers of lines the darker the tone. My hatching isn’t allthat neat. On some old master drawings you can see that they expended a great deal of energy on makingsure the lines all follow the same contour. Done like this, hatching can be used to show the shape of aform 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 alwayswas, not enough patience. I recently bought a book of old master portraits, some of the hatching on thosedrawings is really well done. As soon as I get my arse into gear, I’ll copy a couple to study how theydid it.

Twenty drawings of hands