Add some texture to your life

Besides the Colour in Decor class I’m taking this fall, I’m also taking Drafting. Our latest assignment is drawing textures. Wow, it’s not easy!! But it’s so cool to see how simple techniques can create realistic-looking texture. We’re using four basic shading techniques. For all the techniques, you have to gradually build up the layering to achieve the correct tonal effect.

Hatching

Hatching is a series of more or less parallel lines. The spacing and density of the lines controls the lightness or darkness of the shading. Hatching can follow the contours of a form to emphasize the orientation of the surfaces.

 

Crosshatching

Crosshatching is a series of two or more series of parallel lines to crate tonal value. The simplest crosshatching consists of two intersecting series of parallel lines. Using three or more sets of lines helps create a greater range of tonal values and surface textures. Crosshatching renders a darker range than hatching.

 

Scribbling

Scribbling involves drawing a network of random, multidirectional lines.  You can vary the shape, density, and direction of the strokes to achieve a wide range of tonal values and textures. The strokes can be broken or continuous, straight or curved, jagged or undulating.

 

Stippling

Stippling creates shading using very fine dots. It’s slow and time-consuming and requires a lot of patience. Tightly spaced dots define sharp and distinct edges. A looser spacing of dots implies softer, more rounded contours. The dots should be uniform in size.

So what can you draw using these four techniques?? Lots of things!! These are the textures we had to draw for our assignment. Believe me, I totally suck at drawing, but knowing how to create shading properly really helps!!

 

Try it yourself — just grab a piece of paper and a pencil and see what you can do :-)

Source: Architectural Graphics by Francis Ching