Hatching (Drawing Technique)

Hatching is a drawing and printmaking technique that builds tone, volume and shadow using a series of closely spaced parallel lines rather than continuous shading. Lines drawn tightly together read as a darker area, while lines spaced further apart read as lighter, so an artist controls value entirely through the placement and density of individual strokes. Because it works through line rather than a blended gradient, hatching suits media where smooth smudged shading is difficult, such as pen and ink, engraving and woodcut, and it remains one of the most basic techniques taught in figure and life drawing. Cross-hatching, in which two or more layers of hatched lines cross at an angle to darken an area further, is a related but distinct technique built on the same principle. In Western art hatching originated in the Middle Ages and developed further in the old master prints of the fifteenth century, when engravers such as Martin Schongauer and printmakers working in woodcut refined cross-hatching into a systematic way of rendering volume; Albrecht Durer in particular perfected the technique of crosshatching in both engraving and woodcut.