Hatching that follows no form
“My shading looks like flat diagonal lines pasted over a round object.”
What is happening
Shading strokes run in straight, arbitrary directions regardless of the surface curvature. Instead of describing volume, the hatched lines flatten the form into a flat screen.
The hand naturally prefers a comfortable diagonal sweep across the page. When shading is treated as merely darkening an area rather than tracing the surface form, the stroke direction ignores the underlying geometry.
The 30-second test
Place your pencil point on a hatch mark and ask whether an ant walking that line would be moving across a curved surface or a flat table.
How to fix it
- Lightly lift the straight hatching using a patted kneaded rubber.
- Draw faint contour wires across the form, wrapping around like rubber bands.
- Lay down new hatch strokes that follow these curved contour paths.
- Use cross-contour lines only where a surface turns in two directions.
- Vary line density to control tone rather than altering stroke angle randomly.
Can it be saved? Partly
Lift back the most jarring flat lines with a kneaded eraser, then glaze over the area with curved cross-contour strokes.
Drill: Cross-contour egg hatch
About 15 minutes. You need:
- smooth drawing paper
- 2B graphite pencil
Draw three large ovals. Shade each purely with curved lines that wrap around the egg form from edge to edge, never using a flat straight stroke.
Background reading
General teaching sites on this subject. They are a reading list, not page-level citations for this advice.
The advice is a generated synthesis of common teaching practice and has not been checked line by line against any source; treat times and difficulty as estimates.