Hatching Without Contours

 

8/12/22 Green Lake neighborhood

A Paris architect I follow on Instagram (kiwon.05) recently shared some sketches made with an intriguing method that I had not seen before. Hatching is the main technique, but I could see no visible contour lines (here’s an example). Other hatched drawings look like they were made in the traditional manner, but the ones that had caught my eye were unique. I asked if they were made without drawing any initial contour lines, and he/she confirmed that they were. [Head explosion emoji!]

So intrigued and inspired was I that I practiced a few times from photos (labeled as such in this post). Then I made several sketches from life, beginning with simple, single objects. Using colored-paper Uglybooks is a good tactic because white highlights help to identify areas that might be too abstract with black ink alone. The method was easier with straight-edged objects like the trash can; hardest was the model John during life drawing.

8/10/22 photo reference

I thought the house rooftops (color sketch at top of page) would be easier than they were – I kept forgetting to leave white spaces for the edges of the gables. I started to hatch a tree, but I’ve learned from previous sketches that I don’t like the look of hatched foliage in my messy style. Instead, I decided to do the trees with watercolor pencils in my usual method. The vehicles were surprisingly easier than the houses!

I started wondering if this technique was similar to direct watercolor (painting without following an initial contour drawing), at least in principle. In the case of painting, it’s about identifying shapes without outlining them first. I have some experience with this concept using brush pens for extremely short life-drawing poses, which requires painting only the shaded side of the figure.

Contour-less hatching seems like it should be the same concept, but somehow it’s much more challenging to draw a series of lines without boundaries than it is to make brush strokes. Arghh! What an enjoyable, torturous brain buster! Masochists R Us!

8/10/22 photo reference

8/10/22 photo reference

8/10/22 photo reference

8/11/22 Gas Works Park

8/11/22 life drawing

8/11/22 Space Needle from Gas Works Park

8/12/22 Green Lake neighborhood