Cross-Hatching

Before I did my first cross hatching piece, I was very skeptical of the technique and how to approach it. The whole process seemed too tedious for my liking, but once I laid down my first few criss crosses on the paper, I really enjoyed it.

It's good to step out of the box as an artist, try new mediums, dabble in this and that. I was that guy a few years ago where I thought I knew what I liked and that's all I would do because that's all I was comfortable with, but I'm glad in the last two years I grew some gonads and tried new things in the art world.

Cross hatching is most commonly used with ink, some artists have been known to use graphite.

So what you need for this project is a graphite pencil, I like using an HB, you'll be using this to draw the sketch of your piece. I know I know, no color pencils for this project.

Also you'll need pens, my favorite type of pens not just for cross hatching but in general are micron pens. They're high quality fine tip pens that come in a variety of line sizes and colors and don't smudge once they are dry. For this cross hatching assignment I chose to go for black. I most regularly use 05, 03, 01 and 005 for the tiny details.

A nice clean piece of paper of some sort is obviously needed for this assignment as well, illustration board works well but you could even go for canson paper. And a CLEAN kneaded eraser works best for the clean up.

I did, yes you guessed it, a portrait for the cross hatching assignment that was assigned back in fall in one of my illustration classes. I wanted it to be comical so I went with the reality star Big Ang from the vh1 series.

Okay, so when you start off with your sketch in the graphite really try to focus on the shadows of whatever you are drawing. Try looking at them more as shapes then shadows and lightly sketch them in.

Once you're happy with what you have for the sketch this is where you might get a little scared, but don't be! You can read an artists confidence in their mark makings, but you have to remember every piece you do is a stepping stone to becoming a better artist. You're going to learn from your mistakes.

Start with a larger sized tip pen with your mark making and begin to chose areas where it may be the darkest part of your piece and begin criss crossing/ cross hatching away!

The marks should almost look like thousands of X's built into a shape.

Gradually work all over the piece focusing on the darkest areas and then slowly spreading out giving the piece volume and value. Creating value in cross hatching is key to a successful piece!

Being my first cross hatching piece, I feel like I learned a lot from it, it may not be the best work of art by any means but like I said, each piece is stepping stone to becoming a better artist.