Sketch Book Exercise – Organic Form With Gradated Hatching

Here’s an exercise that shows you how to draw organic shapes with hatching gradations and your imagination. This technique creates a fissured surface that can be used for rocks or a cracked desert floor at a distance, fungus or reptile scales at close range, and lots of other things that your imagination will come up with once you know how to create it.

You’ll need a 4B and a 2B pencil, a kneaded eraser, and a medium rough drawing paper.

To make flattened pencil tips, run the pencil back and forth over paper until the lead wears down, and it’s width is what you want. A flat tip makes a grainy texture, and it’s easy to make an even tone with one.

1. Sphere With Nodule Shapes

Hatch a round shape using a 4b pencil with a wide, flattened tip. (This shape is about three inches wide.) Keep the hatching even by using the same pressure on the pencil. Then, divide the circle into smaller shapes that will become nodules.

2. Sphere Shading And Nodule Lines

Still using the 4B, add shading to the larger round shape by gradating inward from the edges. Then, darken and widen the nodule shape lines.

Make the lines dark, but don’t press so hard that you crush the grain of the paper.

The circle with arrows represents the simple lighting I used for my drawing. The gradation is darkest at the outer edge of the sphere and ends at the smaller circle near the center.

3. Shaded Nodules

Switch to a 2B with a small, flat tip. Gradate the edges of the nodule lines and blend them into the hatching.

The harder lead and smaller tip fills in the places that the softer lead missed and darkens the hatch.

4. Deeper Three Dimensional Form

You could use the last step as a finished form, but if you want to make the drawing look even more three-dimensional, lift out highlights with a kneaded eraser.

Pinch the eraser into a rounded point shape and gently tap the drawing with it to lift out highlights.

Don’t rub the drawing to erase, or you’ll change the texture.

Make the highlights lighter as they reach the brightest part near the center of the sphere.

This follows the pattern of the first overall shading added in step two, and makes each nodule look like it’s part of the larger sphere.

You can easily erase too much of the shading carefully created in the first steps, so work slowly and check your work often.

If you erase too much, hatch it back with the 2B pencil and a very light touch.

You can take out dark blotches or even out the tone with taps of the eraser, but that will probably need retouching.

Food For The Imagination

You can create a range of nodule shapes by varying gradations.

For example, this drawing has both rounded and flat nodules. The round ones were made with long gradations and smallish highlights lifted from the middle, and the flat looking nodules are hardly gradated at all.

Now go draw something that looks like it lives under a rock. :)

I’m a Dick Blick affiliate and I get a little money when you buy from my supply links at no extra cost to you, so if you do that, thanks! I’ve been buying my supplies from them for over thirty years. In any case, do try these brands. They’re inexpensive, good, and will save you time and headaches.

Drawing Supplies For Textured Organic Form

Strathmore 400 Series Drawing Paper Pad – I used Strathmore 400 series drawing paper for this drawing. It’s an inexpensive paper that holds up well to all kinds of drawing and erasing techniques. It has a rough surface that doesn’t allow fine detail, but it makes a organic looking texture that goes down quickly. It’s a slightly off-white cream color that looks good under graphite.

Derwent Graphic Pencil Set – Set of 4 – Perfect for the Strathmore 400 series paper.

Blick by KUM Long Point Sharpener – Two hole sharpener. One hole sharpens the wood, the other sharpens the graphite. Hardly ever breaks the lead. Extra blades in back.

General’s Kneaded Eraser – Not too sticky or oily. Form it into a rounded tip and ‘tap’ out highlights.

Alvin Vinyl Eraser – Great for clean-up.

Draw well, draw strong, never stop!
Carol