Shading techniques and representing texture

1Marks you can almost touch

A good drawing of a pineapple makes you feel its prickly skin; a good drawing of an enamel mug makes you feel its cold, smooth shine. Neither drawing has any real bumps on the paper. The artist has used different kinds of marks to build value and to suggest texture, the way a surface feels. Illustrators of books and comics, and the artists who draw products for advertisements, use these same marks every day. In this lesson you learn six ways to shade and how to turn them into textures.

2Six shading techniques

• Hatching: parallel lines. Lines drawn closer together, or pressed harder, make a darker value. Quick and clean, and it works in pen as well as pencil.
• Cross-hatching: a second layer of lines crossing the first, then a third, at different angles. Each layer darkens the value. Ideal for pen, which cannot be pressed lighter or darker.
• Contour hatching: lines that curve around the form, following its surface like the cross-contour lines of the last lesson. They show value and roundness at the same time.
• Stippling: dots. More dots, closer together, make a darker value. Slow but very controlled, and good for soft, grainy surfaces.
• Scribbling: small, loose, tangled loops. Crowd them for darks and spread them for lights. Good for rough or woolly textures.
• Blending: smooth tone made with the side of the lead and softened with a paper stump. Good for smooth surfaces and soft gradations.

3Actual and visual texture

Actual texture is the real feel of a surface, which you can touch. Visual (implied) texture is the texture that a drawing suggests on flat paper. To draw a texture, first look at three things: the marks on the surface (grooves, dots, fibres, cracks), the edges (crisp or broken) and the highlights (sharp or soft).

4Texture follows form

• Texture is clearest where the light falls and fades into deep shadow, where you cannot see detail.
• Marks get smaller and more crowded where the surface turns away from you, just as pattern does on a round basket.
• The outline shows texture too: a smooth mango has a clean edge, a pineapple a jagged one.

Worked example: avocado or mango?

Byiringiro wants a pencil drawing in which a viewer can tell an avocado from a mango without any colour. He compares the two surfaces and plans his marks.

1. Avocado skin: bumpy and dull. He shades it with stippling and small scribbles, a fairly dark middle value, and leaves tiny specks of paper white on the bumps that face the light. The highlight is broken, not smooth.
2. Mango skin: smooth and slightly shiny. He blends its value with a paper stump, keeps it lighter overall, and leaves one clear, soft-edged highlight.
3. Outlines: slightly uneven for the avocado, clean and smooth for the mango.
4. Check: he covers the labels and asks a classmate which fruit is which. If the classmate is unsure, the textures need more contrast.

5Make it

1. Technique swatches: rule six 3 cm × 6 cm boxes and fill each with one technique, going from dark to light, as in the diagram.
2. Texture sampler: collect six small objects with different surfaces, for example bark, a stone, a feather, a piece of basket, a metal spoon and an eggshell. Draw a 4 cm square close-up of each surface. Under each, write the technique you used.
3. Texture still life: set up three objects with very different textures, such as a shiny mug, a rough stone and a woven mat, lit from one side. Draw them with at least five values, choosing a different technique for each surface.

6Look closely

The Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) made this print of a marbled cone shell in 1650. He owned shells like this one in his collection of rare objects in Amsterdam. He drew the lines into a copper plate, which was then inked and printed on paper.

• The dark shadow side and the cast shadow are built from cross-hatching: layers of fine lines crossing at different angles.
• The net-like markings on the shell get smaller and closer together towards the pointed end and round the far side: texture follows form.
• The highlight on the top is plain paper, left untouched.
• A shell collector would notice that the spiral turns the wrong way. Rembrandt drew the shell onto the plate as he saw it, and a print always comes out as a mirror image. He wrote his signature and the date backwards, so that they printed the right way round. You will use the same idea when you carve stamps in Unit 3.

Practice