Blending, hatching, crosshatching, shading

1- Blending is often tricky for beginners. The first tip is to ensure your drawing outlines are accurate before doing any kind of blending.

Practice hatching/ crosshatching and other types of blending many times before using them in your drawings. With hatching, try out different directions and layers, but decide on a consistent approach. Hatching does not look good when it appears as a messy tangle of lines in random directions.

Most of my drawing tips are referring to drawings done with graphite, as this is the drawing medium of my choice. Try charcoal as well, you may like it. (Try sanguine, black and white on a toned paper for Leonardo-type portraits!) Remember that charcoal and graphite can be used together, but a very heavy dark layer of shading in graphite cannot be further darkened with charcoal, as the smooth shiny graphite will not grab the new matte layer of charcoal. but if it is only a light shading in graphite you can darken over with charcoal, you can always shade over the charcoal with graphite. Those seeking extra black shades may wish to use charcoal in these circumstances. The textures of the two are quite different and so adjacent areas can be contrasted by utilizing this difference (e.g., hair, pupils, eyelashes etc in charcoal, skin tones in graphite)

2-  BLENDING TOOLS

When blending, regardless of medium, DO NOT use your fingers! (Paper stumps are cheap at the art shop so keep a few handy). Tissues, chamois or paper towels are ok as well for larger areas. Just don’t touch your drawing paper in the sections where you plan to blend. Your skin can transfer oil to the paper, which can leave marks after blending. Creating a smooth blend then becomes much harder. Skin oil marks don’t come off. (use a clean piece of paper to rest your hand on when you are working your way around, this can protect your drawing from smudging etc). The great thing about a paper stump is that it can turn into a drawing tool as well as a blending tool. It picks up the graphite or charcoal as you are blending, and then you can do soft drawing with it as well.

3- a) BLENDING TIPS

Realistic shading with blending needs a broad range of values. The most common blending mistake is to over-blend dark values. Either use blending very sparingly in dark shadowed areas or don’t blend your dark values at all. If blending removes too much graphite, you can darken the values again by adding more graphite (or charcoal). The final look of blended shading can be affected by many factors, including your choice of blending tools, shading techniques, materials (called media), and types of drawing paper. 

b) FROTTAGE

You can even use frottage and other texturing techniques as a part of your blending strategies,  (e.g. creating a barky texture on a drawing of a tree by using a textured surface under, put your paper on top and rub the graphite stick or other bar over the texture, lighter and darker where needed.) I used to create the textures that I wanted on a board using modelling paste. once they are dry, you'll have a range of frottage textures whenever you need them (e.g… ocean waves, tree bark, grass etc. You can even make open weave texture boards to frottage some cloth-like textures.

c) BRUSHING POWDER

Another idea to try: practice spreading graphite powder onto your background with a brush (you can collect the powder when you are sharpening pencils to a point on sandpaper, tap the sandpaper over a little bowl every now and then, or get a graphite block and purposefully create a pile of 'dust' by sanding it over the bowl.) Different kinds of brushes will create softer or more textured effects, just have fun experimenting. Highlights can be lifted off with different erasers and darker areas shaded into further. (take great care not to inhale the graphite powder)