by Henk ter Heide on Saturday April 17, 2010
Sometimes I get reminded of all the stupid things I was taught when I was a child. Things like it’s better to quite an activity then not to finish the project you’re working on right now.
The purpose of this sketch was to find out if it’s possible to get these nice color mixes with color hatching while at the same time retaining some control over the color.
As it turns out, that is possible.
Because it’s easier to color between the lines I had helped myself by drawing some random lines.
But by doing so it felt as though this was supposed to be a real drawing.
So after I had colored a few panels and felt that I had nothing more to learn from this sketch and I wanted to put it on this site and move on.
But then I heard the very angry voice of my mother in my head. “You never finish anything!”. “You should finish what you start!”. “You are always procrastinating”. And drawing lost all of it’s fun.
That was how it used to be some 40 years ago.
At one point I took up dancing. Which was fun apart from the fact that I was the only guy present. (Which is fun when you’re 16 but not when you’re 13 and all the girls are better dancers then you are.)
You wouldn’t believe how mad my mother became when I announced that was going to quit.
After Mr. “nobody’s” comment I started thinking again and remembered that this sketch only has a limited goal.
Thinking about this some more I did realize one thing though. What is missing from my current way of working is speed. Since my best drawings where kind of accidental there is not much purpose to my thinking about what I’m doing on a drawing by drawing base.
I do realize that figurative drawings would sell much better then abstract. Drawing abstract is a way of experimenting with techniques without having the straight jacked of having to draw objects that are prospectively correct. (If nothing else I’ll always be a perfectionist).
I do want to go back to drawing more recognizable shapes. But only if I can find a way to draw the complicated world in which I’m living.
color hatching sketch
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday April 5, 2010
It does seem to be possible to control the colors while I’m color hatching and still get some interesting colors.
Of course this drawing is only a proof of concept. Doesn’t look like much, does it.
Turns out that there is a way to get the colors to interact. I can use either the lightest yellow or the white pencil to blend colors.
If I use yellow to blend blues I get a lot of green colors.
If I use white something happens. Not quite sure what.
I have to do some more experimenting to find out.
Color hatching 1
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by Henk ter Heide on Sunday April 4, 2010
My fountain pen is gliding over the paper. Up, down, up, down.
I love to watch while the black is slowly consuming the white paper. I could do this all day.
But I won’t.
If I just paint the whole paper black there isn’t much to look at.
But I would want to…
Then comes the hard part.
Although the colors I get with this color hatching technique are beautiful. They are also completely unpredictable.
I don’t like things that are unpredictable.
The shorter the lines, the more colors I use, the more unpredictable and beautiful the result.
Or I can begin with a layer of some color and then place a few lines on top. That’s far more predictable but not as beautiful.
I’m mostly fearful of my next few drawings.
I want to try to make kind of a landscape using my new color technique. But I’m not sure how.
If I can’t predict the colors how can I get them to interact?
Get a print of this drawing
Love and fear
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by Henk ter Heide on Sunday May 25, 2008
Solving a few blogging problems.
I’ve gotten stuck. First with drawing and later with writing my reviews of other art sites.
It took me a few weeks to figure out what was going wrong and how I should deal with it.
Getting rid of a drawing
I was in the middle of a hatching exercise when I lost interest. I just didn’t feel like finishing this drawing.
For a while I thought that it might have to do something with the time of the year or with the wheather. I do tend to loose interest when skies turn gray. Something which happens every winter here in the Netherlands. But the summer has started and the skies are blue and sunny but still I don’t feel like finishing this drawing.
I don’t know whether it has something to do with autism or if it’s just my personality, but I feel that you should always finish what you start. Before I can start a new drawing I have to finish this one.
Only thing is that I won’t.
Earlier this week I remembered that I have been in this situation before. Not with drawing but with other hobbies of mine. Reading for instance. Sometimes I would start a book. Read a few pages and then stop. And then the book would just sit there. Waiting for me to finish it. While that book sat there I wouldn’t start an other book. I couldn’t. I felt I had to finish this one before I could start an other one.
Usually as a child I read books I had borrowed from the library. After three weeks I had to return them and get a new bunch of books.
After getting rid of the book I couldn’t finish I could again start reading.
I’ve been thinking about what is wrong with this drawing. I’m not sure. Maybe I don’t like the colors or maybe I have had it with practicing hatching for now.
I don’t know. But what ever it is in stead of waisting a lot of time trying to figure it out, I can better just start with the next one.
Hatching trees
Don’t listen to advice
I’ve been reading a lot of advice about how to write better blog posts.
One advice is to take your time. Spread the writing of an article over a few days. That way you have time to re-think your article.
I have tried that technique with personal posts and with posts about drawings but it never sat very good with me. With personal posts I find that I loose the train of my thoughts if I don’t finish the post in one go. And with posts about drawing I find that there isn’t enough to say to warrant so much trouble for one post.
But a few weeks ago I decided that it might be a good idea for my review articles.
Watching a sites I want to review I often find that I have idea in my head of which I don’t know how to describe them. I thought that I might improve on my posts if I were to leave a few days between the selection of the sites I wanted to review and the writing of the post. A few days to gather my thoughts.
But it didn’t work. Instead of improving my articles I felt that they became worse.
It took me a while to figure out what was going wrong. It isn’t that my article became worse, they stay more or less the same. The problem is that my expectations became so much bigger that my articles felt worse.
Being autistic means that the ideas I have about sites usually come in the form of pictures. Most of the time I have a hard time translating those pictures to words. Taking a few days longer doesn’t make it any easier and doesn’t make the translation any better.
As good as this advice might be for other people I’ll go back to doing it my own way.
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by Henk ter Heide on Sunday April 6, 2008
Trying to get a natural white color.
Ever since I started drawing I’ve been thinking about how I could draw white surfaces. The problem being that I don’t have white pencils in my box and I want the surface to look natural white instead of paper white.
I’m not sure whether there is a difference between the two but it does feel that way to me.
While practicing hatching a while back I had an idea how I could get a kind of natural white in a black and white checkered marble floor.
The idea is that the color of the marble isn’t constant all over the surface. In some areas people walk a lot causing a lot of wear and tear. Closer to the wall where less people walk the colors are more clear.
With hatching you can give the black tiles a nice dark color.
To get the kind of walked on feel for the white tiles I tried a little blending. Using a large folded piece of kitchen paper I started with the darkest tiles to get the kitchen paper black. Then I used the kitchen paper to color the white parts in the walked on area.
checkered floor
The drawing didn’t work out the way I pictured it in my mind. Hopefully that’s just due to lack of skill and I will get it better the next time I try something like this.
Their is a up side though. For this study I had to do a lot of hatching and I find that my technique is improving.
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday March 26, 2008
Trying to influence the darkness of the color with different hatching techniques.
One of my biggest problems in drawing with color pencil has been my inability to control the darkness of a color.
For this practice drawing I decided to see what I could do to get a color darker or lighter.
I thought that both the number of times you cross hatch and the amount of pressure you put on the pencil might have an influence on the color.
I was only partly right.
The number of times you cross hatch does have an influence on the darkness of the square.
Putting more pressure on the pencil didn’t have much influence on the color of the line.
(Actually this isn’t completely true. If you put a lot of pressure on a pencil you do get a darker line. A problem arises when you start drawing with softer, more expensive pencils that contain more pigment. With these pencils your point will break if you use to much pressure.)
A better technique to get a darker line is to slowly rotate the pencil in your hand while your drawing. The business end of a pencil wears down while you’re drawing. By rotating the pencil you make sure you always have a sharp edge on the paper.
Whether this influences the color of the square depends on your hatching skill. If the lines are too far apart the overall picture will still seem very light.
Click the picture and go to the original size and you can see the individual lines both in the dark blue and the dark yellow square.
Hatching techniques
I also tried the hatching technique children usual use. Starting in a corner or at some arbitrary point and radiating out: First coloring the little bit where I started and then going on with a progressively larger space until whole the square is colored. (Lower right blue square and the brown square).
I’m not completely sure which I like better. I assume it has a lot to do with what you’re drawing. When drawing a kitchen cupboard traditional cross hatching would probably look better, but when drawing a tree seeing the direction of the pencil strokes could be very nice.
For the pink square I tried what would happen if I blended the color using a piece of kitchen paper. Since the piece of paper was far larger then the square the color bled over the edge. In my next drawing I’m going to try to use this effect.
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday March 24, 2008
Hatching some squares.
The easiest way to practice hatching is to draw a few lines on a piece of paper and go about it in the same way that children learn to write. But that way turns out to be very boring.
This time I drew a few squares and colored them in with hatching and cross hatching.
Hatching shapes Squares
The dark blue square shows the importance of cross hatching. Not only is the color a lot darker but you can’t see that I didn’t stay within the lines.
I’ll have to practice some more.
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by Henk ter Heide on Saturday March 22, 2008
I’ve found a better way to practice hatching. More fun to do and more fun to look at.
Hatching shapes
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday March 17, 2008
Getting a little bored while practicing the hatching technique.
As important it is to really learn this hatching technique, practicing is about as interesting as watching paint dry.
I started this practice sheet about 2 weeks ago but couldn’t get myself to finish it.
This morning I thought of an other way of practicing (cross) hatching. I could make a sort of abstract color shapes thingy. That way I can also get some idea about how I can mix colors while hatching.
Sadly I can’t even show you this boring practice sheet because my scanner has broken down.
I’ll update this post as soon as I have my scanner back.
Color hatching 3
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by Henk ter Heide on Thursday February 28, 2008
Rethinking my method of learning how to (cross) hatch.
This morning I remembered reading a site about improving your handwriting. The site advised to go back to basics and start over with practicing to draw a hundred A’s, a hundred B’s etc. just like the way you did it in school when you first where taught how to write.
I never tried it because nowadays I hardly use any handwriting.
But it would be a good way of practicing hatching. Drawing a lot of horizontal lines instead of filling a grid with hatched lines and using more time turning the paper then actually hatching.
Thinking about method also gave me a clear picture on the level of skill I should aim for.
Until now I thought it would be sufficient if I learned to draw the lines the right length but it isn’t. I should get enough skill to (cross) hatch with the same ease as with which I’m type this article. (Cross)hatching lines should become as easy as touch typing.
I’ve been told that people with autism have problems learning new skills because we take more time to automate a skill. Personally I’ve always found that to be a big advantage. I never have the problem that I have to unlearn some skill because I learned it the wrong way the first time round.
But if you have the bad luck of not being autistic then this is a time to pay close attention to what you are doing.
Ink hatching 2
There isn’t a right and a wrong way to (cross) hatching as long as you get the job done, but there is an easy and a not so easy way. The problem being that what is easy for me doesn’t necessary have to be the easiest way for you. you’ll have to experiment a little.
I found that there are a few things you can vary to make hatching easier:
- The length of the line. (I’ve found that practicing hatching becomes much easier if you start with shorter lines.)
- Do you work towards your (drawing) hand or away from it. (I’ve found that for me it’s easier to work away from my hand even though that means that my pencil partially covers my work.)
- In what direction do you draw. Upward or downward. (I started drawing downward but after gaining some experience I use both.)
- The angle of the paper. (I’m scanning this practice drawing in the angle I drew it. I’m right handed.)
- Drawing speed. (I found that drawing faster made it easier do draw straight lines. Which might mean that if you want to draw curved lines it could be easier to draw slower.)
- How much pressure do you put on the pencil. (The type of pencil you use has some influence on this, but I found that less pressure is easier.)
(Oh, the fun of writing an English blog if English isn’t you mother tongue:
Doubting whether cross hashing is one word or two word I looked it up in my dictionary and couldn’t find it. So I went on searching the word on Google, like I always do when my dictionary can’t help me.
Only this time I found that the word isn’t (cross) hashing but (cross) hatching. Sadly my spell checker didn’t save my from this embarrassment because “hash” is also an English word. Only thing is that it has nothing to do with drawing.
I’ve used the word hashing both in a few articles and in a few titles. I can’t change titles without breaking links that I have set up from other sites to these articles. I could change the spelling within the articles but I’ve discovered that if I do that people who follow this site via my rss feed get these articles again.
)
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