Tutored Life Drawing Inspiration Blog Week 05: Hatching (Patreon)

Continuing the tonal theme of last week we turn our attention to hatching as an efficient method of adding tone to a drawing - be it horizontal, vertical or diagonal; consistent or shifting in angle. These inspirations blogs, which accompany our existing 34-week tutored life drawing course of blogs and videos, are intended to point you towards artists that you might not have encountered and to remind you of artists you might have forgotten about. Here three of our favourite artists who employ hatching in the work to great effect!

--

Anders Zorn

Swedish artist Andres Zorn (1860 – 1920) is remembered for his paintings, but also for his accomplished intaglio prints. Despite lending his name to the preferred limited palette of contemporary sight-size Ateliers Zorn did not work exclusively from life but made extensive use of photographic reference material. Like many etchers he made great use of hatching in his work, often eschewing contour in favour of energetically hatched blocks on tone. In this etched portrait of the writer Ernest Renan Zorn uses the direction of his hatched lines to lead the eye of the viewer through the image.

• Read more about Anders Zorn HERE 
• Take a look at this book of Zorn's etchings HERE 

Ernest Renan by Anders Zorn, 1892, etching, engraving, and drypoint

--

Edgar Degas

The French impressionist Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917) made great use of combined contour and diagonal hatching in his lose observational pencil sketches, an element of visual vocabulary that we often see carried through into his draftsmanly pastel work In the drawing below her employs dark, hatched marks to support the blocks of pastel colour, while in more developed coloured work he mixes colours optically on the surface of the paper using hatched marks in coloured pastel.  

• HERE is a 1hr lecture on Degas and his use of pastel from the Museum of Fine Art, Boston
• HERE is my favourite book of Degas drawings

Dancer by Edgar Degas, 1896, pastel on paper

--

Simon Plum

Our contemporary artist this week is the British artist Simon Plum. Plum's surreal and darkly humorous paintings, prints and drawings provide a commentary on the anxieties and absurdities of modern life, where animals and people appear in strange and unlikely scenarios, chasing each other endlessly around the kitchen table or clambering over rooftops above the terraced streets of his hometown, Preston. Simon Plum makes particularly effective and unusual use of vertical and horizontal hatching in his life drawings and portrait studies.

• Take a look at Simon Plum's life drawings HERE 
• Follow Simon Plum on Instagram HERE 

Life drawing by Simon Plum

--

The blog posts in the 34-week tutored life drawing course are available to all supporters, the full course of videos and reference photos are available to life and student tier supporters.

>> Read the Week 05: Hatching blog post HERE (All Tiers)
>> Watch the Week 05: Hatching main lesson HERE (Student & Life Tiers)
>> Watch the Week05: Hatching demo video HERE (Student & Life Tiers)

Find links to the whole Tutored Life Drawing Course HERE