07-06-2021, 12:32 PM
"Smooth gradation would be lot easier by using smudging but nothing worthwhile ever comes from being easy. Gotta keep at it!"
Possibly! But isn't the point of using hatching to indicate gradation? With hard outlines you cannot indicate softness, roundness, or gradation. But with hatched lines you can! And this is the reason for drawing with them. Let me explain what I mean.
You are shading your drawing mainly with perpendicular crossed lines, which creates patches of tone, but not much form. The main thing you should be wanting to get is the illusion that the form is turning away from light, that it is round. But patches of tone with no gradation it do not do this. A transition between two areas of tone does this. And this is why I say that you should focus on value, not cross hatching technique. Because it doesn't really matter what technique you use, you have to know what values you are trying to achieve with it in the first place. In my rendering of the man on the left, you can see it's not pretty, and I kind of let the lines cross in whatever way. But I can do that because when I zoom out I can see the effect the values have, and whether they are coming together or if they need to be corrected. I could just scribble and though it would not be elegant, it would have the important information.
But since you want to study cross hatching, I'd like to give you at least a few tips that I have picked up from studying drawings, though it's definitely not something I'm an expert at.
At a. and b. I'm showing how you often see the shadow shape drawn. First there are lines that bend around the form, and then lines crossing it where the shadow begins. The lines are both bent, and the angle they cross at is a very wide X, gradating outward toward the light area. There's no line where the shadow shape starts because a hard line always represents a hard change in form, not a soft one. So the division of light and shadow is more subtle. When the rest of the lines for the shadow are filled in at b. , it makes and evenly toned shadow shape with a soft edge. Crossing the lines at this angle is useful because it creates very little space between the two directions of lines, which makes gradation easier. Sometimes you will see the lines in the shadow parallel to the form, though.
If you do it like at c. you see it is very flat and makes a hard edge where the shadow just starts and stops. You don't really want that unless you are drawing something which has flat planes like a cube.
So that's kind of the basics of it that I've observed anyway, I'm sure there are lots of ways to do things, but you should avoid hard patches of tone if shading something round.
The other thing to look out for is how you indicate divisions between forms and objects. at d. A hard line indicates complete division between objects, something that is overlapping or has a cut line. A hashed line indicates a soft division. You used hard lines to divide the pecs and abs, but it should be soft because the skin over the muscles softens them together. The hard line also makes it feel stiff and inorganic.
Hopefully that helps somewhat?
Possibly! But isn't the point of using hatching to indicate gradation? With hard outlines you cannot indicate softness, roundness, or gradation. But with hatched lines you can! And this is the reason for drawing with them. Let me explain what I mean.
You are shading your drawing mainly with perpendicular crossed lines, which creates patches of tone, but not much form. The main thing you should be wanting to get is the illusion that the form is turning away from light, that it is round. But patches of tone with no gradation it do not do this. A transition between two areas of tone does this. And this is why I say that you should focus on value, not cross hatching technique. Because it doesn't really matter what technique you use, you have to know what values you are trying to achieve with it in the first place. In my rendering of the man on the left, you can see it's not pretty, and I kind of let the lines cross in whatever way. But I can do that because when I zoom out I can see the effect the values have, and whether they are coming together or if they need to be corrected. I could just scribble and though it would not be elegant, it would have the important information.
But since you want to study cross hatching, I'd like to give you at least a few tips that I have picked up from studying drawings, though it's definitely not something I'm an expert at.
At a. and b. I'm showing how you often see the shadow shape drawn. First there are lines that bend around the form, and then lines crossing it where the shadow begins. The lines are both bent, and the angle they cross at is a very wide X, gradating outward toward the light area. There's no line where the shadow shape starts because a hard line always represents a hard change in form, not a soft one. So the division of light and shadow is more subtle. When the rest of the lines for the shadow are filled in at b. , it makes and evenly toned shadow shape with a soft edge. Crossing the lines at this angle is useful because it creates very little space between the two directions of lines, which makes gradation easier. Sometimes you will see the lines in the shadow parallel to the form, though.
If you do it like at c. you see it is very flat and makes a hard edge where the shadow just starts and stops. You don't really want that unless you are drawing something which has flat planes like a cube.
So that's kind of the basics of it that I've observed anyway, I'm sure there are lots of ways to do things, but you should avoid hard patches of tone if shading something round.
The other thing to look out for is how you indicate divisions between forms and objects. at d. A hard line indicates complete division between objects, something that is overlapping or has a cut line. A hashed line indicates a soft division. You used hard lines to divide the pecs and abs, but it should be soft because the skin over the muscles softens them together. The hard line also makes it feel stiff and inorganic.
Hopefully that helps somewhat?