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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by Henk ter Heide on Friday August 17, 2007
Save drawings
Before I realized that photographs and drawings aren’t supposed to look alike I did like to draw. I just was afraid of the end result.
So to taste the joy of drawing without having to be afraid of the end result I drew a lot of Intersecting bottles. But there was only a limited amount of joy I could get out of drawing intersecting bottles. When it bored me I’d try my hand at some abstract art.
Shapes and feelings
I tried but never succeeded. I ran into a few problems.
I didn’t know what shapes I should draw. Is it abstract if you just draw a few colored rectangle? Apparently since Mondrian did it. But I didn’t know that as a child and thought that drawing rectangles would be boring.
Somewhere I read or heard that abstract drawings should be about feelings. But how do you draw anger or falling in love? I could draw two people fighting or kissing but that wouldn’t be abstract.
My abstract drawings
The last few weeks I’ve been doing some abstract drawings. The funny thing is that I never set out to draw abstract. I just drew a few pictures that came to mind.
- Trying to perfect a technique I drew Mask.
- Not ready to admit defeat, I tried what a spoiled drawing could have been and produced Patched.
- While trying to draw a colored river I drew Tentacles.
- Trying to fight my fear for drawing unstructured I made Who’s afraid of yellow, red (and blue).
- A piece of carpet on the BBC show Click (of all places) remembered me of something that looked like Sideways.
- While being bored to tears I close my eyes and saw “Shifted”.
Shifted
The rules
After doing a few abstract drawings I’ve found that there are a few rules that make it much easier to make abstract drawings.
- Drawing abstract isn’t a short cut. All of the above drawings took me several days to complete. Whether the portrait you draw is any good or not, it will only take an hour to complete.
- It’s very easy to find a shape to draw because anything will do. Use the shape of what ever is in front of you. If you don’t like that shape add a few line (like I did in Intersecting bottles).
A technique I often use is just closing my eyes and using the shapes and colors I see at the inside of my eyelids. (It helps if you face a dim lamp while doing this).
- Drawing abstract has everything to do with feelings but that doesn’t mean you can chose to draw an emotion.
Abstract is about the emotions you feel while your drawing. Your feelings will influence the colors you chose. If you’re feeling depressed you’ll chose darker colors then when you’re happy.
When I was drawing Tentacles I had the eerie feeling I was putting an invisible message into my drawing.
Featured on See me draw
A fitting site for an article about abstract art. I don’t think I would ever have thought of this but you can even use leftover paint to produce very nice abstract paintings.
Be sure to also read the rest of the site. Anne-Laure Djaballah does very nice abstract paintings.
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by Henk ter Heide on Friday August 3, 2007
Series
This is the last part of a four part series to find an easy technique to draw a dark color around light colored details. The series consist of:
Finishing touches
After doing A quick and dirty way of drawing fireworks I wasn’t satisfied with the color of the night sky. It was far to light for my taste.
The point of that drawing was to find if it would be possible to get a dark sky without putting very much “work” into the drawing.
Clearly it wasn’t.
With this drawing I put in all the work that was necessary into getting as dark blue as I could get.
Pressure
Just like with the last drawing I started out with drawing the stars. After that I painted the paper with hair styling wax. Than I colored the whole sheet blue. All over the stars.
I used quite a lot of pressure on the blue pencil and drew three layers. I used three hues of blue to get the best and darkest result possible.
The yellow and orange stars where just visible through the blue pencil and I used a tee spoon to scrape the blue off. As usually I finished my drawing with a hair spray to fixate it.
Stars
Conclussion
What have I learned from my experiments?
- It’s quite easy to draw fireworks and stars against a dark sky.
- It’s possible to draw on top of colors that are fixated with hair spray .
- Although it is possible to blend colors using the brush I used to paint wax on the sheet of paper, the whole sheet gets the same color. A flowing color like I got in Mask doesn’t seem to be possible.
- When mixing pencil with hair styling wax you should be very careful where you put your hands otherwise everything will get blue
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Let’s clear the stage for a fellow autist. Gilles Trehin draws pictures of the imaginary town of Urville.
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by Henk ter Heide on Friday July 27, 2007
Series
This is the third part of a series about drawing dark colors around light colors. The series consists of:
Just grease
While I was doing yesterdays drawing I thought that it should be possible to get almost the same result without the liquid masking film.
Fireworks quick and dirty
This is the same drawing as yesterday with hair wax and and a few layers of blue color on top. Since it’s very sticky I’m using a sheet of plastic to protect my scanner.
Fireworks quick and dirty
After coloring the paper blue I used a tee spoon to scrape the blue color from the fireworks and houses.
The fireworks look quite nice but the night sky is to light.
To get rid of the wax I fixated the drawing using hair spray.
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Drazen Kozjan draws simple looking illustrations
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday July 25, 2007
Series
This is the second part of a series of experiments to find an easy technique of drawing a dark color around light colored detail. The series consists of:
Liquid masking film
Artist who paint with acrylic paint also run into problems with painting lighter colors on top of darker colors. They solve this problem by using something called liquid masking film. A fluid that resembles white paint but when it sets you get something with a rubber feel that you can very easily remove by scratching it away.
When painting you yently paint over the film and remove it when you’re finished. When drawing you scratch pigment on the paper and could very easily remove the film before you’re done.
Draw darker with wax
Since it is so easy to accidently remove the film from the paper makes it all but useless for drawing.
To use the liquid masking film you should have some trick to get more pigment on the paper without having to press very hard.
After some drawings you find that you inadvertent left some fingers on the paper that turned into nasty colored stains. That’s because you fingers leave a fatty residue that picks up much more pigment then paper.
In this instance we can use that to our advantage.
To get more pigment on the paper without pressing I used the kind of wax women put in there hair. (It’s quite possible that butter would work just as well but it will get smelly after a few weeks).
Fireworks easy and dirty
Here I’ve drawn the fireworks. Put the liquid masking film on and painted wax on top. The film and the wax are colorless so you can’t see them. (I used a sheet of plastic to protect my scanner.)
Getting the liquid masking film on the paper was a bit of a problem. At first I tried painting it with a brush but that ruined the brush. I got some advice at my local art shop. Turns out you have to use a (pointed) blender.
(Pointed) blender
A (pointed) blender looks a bit like a bruch and has about the same size as a large brush. But where the hairs would usually go you find a rubber point.
Fireworks easy and dirty
Here I’ve used one layer of blue. To get the best result you should use two layers of blue. preferably two hues. more then one color works best when using a crosshatching technique (drawing horizontal and then vertical).
You can use the paint brush and little bit more wax to blend the color.
Fireworks easy and dirty
I used a knife to remove the masking film.
Finishing up
At this point the drawing is very greasy and it won’t dry.
To prevent my drawings from staining I always fixate them with a little hair spray. This time I needed more then a little. But the drawing isn’t fatty anymore.
Faulty
At first glance this seems like a good technique to color around details. But if you look more closely you see that there is a lot of white around the details. The problem is that it isn’t possible to paint small details with liquid masking film. Using a brush to paint with it, you hardly get any liquid on the paper an using the blender you get to much. It shapes like a droplet and flows over the edges.
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Noli Novak must be one of the most patient people alive. She draws portraits a dot at the time.
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday July 23, 2007
Light color on top of dark color
Ever since I started drawing with color pencils I found one annoying problem. It isn’t possible to draw with a lighter color on top of a darker color. That’s a problem because there’re a lot of situations where you would want to do so. White clouds reflecting on dark water or pink flowers in a green tree to name a few examples.
An alternative to drawing lighter colors on top of darker colors could be to first draw the light color and then draw the darker color around them. But that wouldn’t be a very easy way of drawing and prone to accidents.
Experimenting
Thinking about easy ways to draw fireworks I realized that this would be the perfect opportunity to do a little experimenting to find an easy technique to color around a light color using a darker color.
This post is the first post of a mini series. The series will consist of four parts.
Cheating
The first technique is something of a cheat.
The easiest way to draw light colors on top of a dark blue color is simply to buy a piece of dark blue paper and draw something on it.
Fireworks easy artsy
Although this is very easy method it not very practical. In most situation you won’t be able to use blue paper. In the next part I try something that, hopefully, works a little better.
Featured on see me draw
Does a car dream about becoming a bigger car? Wouldn’t it be nice to shine the light of your flashlight around a corner? On 98pages you find these kind of visual jokes.
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday June 20, 2007
I’ve read somewhere that if you would see a tennis player in the buff you would see that the muscles in his right shoulder are much better developed then the muscles in his left shoulder (assuming he’s right handed). I don’t know about tennis player but it might be true for people who draw.
As I predicted a while back I’m getting better in the technique of blending colors and it’s taking less time but it’s still a lot of work.
Star field 2th sketch
After doing one of these drawing my shoulder is hurting a little. Half way through the second I had to go and do something else because my whole arm hurt.
Mm. After doing the drawing I find it isn’t quit what I had in mind. Maybe I’ll try something new in a while as part of something else. A star field on it self is a lot of work with a boring result.
BTW if you try to color a large surface, like I do in this drawing, you’ll often find that some pencil strokes are much darker then others. To prevent this you should turn the pencil around it’s axel while you’re drawing. That’ll give you more control on the thickness of the line. Then again maybe you want a very light color in that case you should make your strokes longer. Strokes of fifteen to twenty centimeter work nicely.
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