Hatching and cross-hatching — Art, 14–17
You can make a flat page suggest light, volume and texture with nothing but lines. Hatching shows how the direction, spacing and layering of marks change what a surface seems to do.
What the marks do
Hatching is a group of lines placed close together to suggest a darker or textured area. Cross-hatching adds another group over the first, usually in a different direction, so the tone becomes denser. You are not colouring in a shape; you are building its light and surface from visible decisions.
Why artists use it
Before pencils, printers and illustrators needed a way to show grey tones when their tools made only dark marks. Spacing gave them control: wide gaps let the paper act as light, while tight layers made shadows. The problem was not drawing more detail; it was making one colour behave like many tones.
A sphere in ink
Draw a circle and mark a small highlight at its upper left. First, place widely spaced diagonal lines across the lower right, keeping them curved slightly with the form. Add a second set crossing them only in the darkest area. Finally, leave the highlight and nearby paper almost untouched: the changing density makes the circle read as a round sphere.
The trap: filling everything
A common mistake is to make every part equally dark because an empty patch can feel unfinished. That instinct is reasonable: in writing, more marks often mean more information. In drawing, however, untouched paper is an active light, so equal coverage flattens the form. Vary spacing, direction and layers instead of automatically adding ink.
Where it appears
You can see hatching in comics, graphic novels, pen illustrations, old maps and engraved banknotes. It is especially useful when an image must work in one colour or when the artist wants the making of the image to remain visible. Try it in a poster or sketch when smooth shading would hide the character of the mark.
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