Draw A Gradation - Carol's Drawing Blog

Teddy Bear Drawn With Smooth Hatch Technique

smooth hatch gradation practice — Smooth Hatch Gradation Practice

This drawing lesson walks you through a series of increasingly smooth gradations.

You can make a gradation by blending with a stump or tissue, but creating them with no blending at all creates a finer surface texture.

After you’ve practiced, you’ll be able to make hatch marks disappear and leave behind a smooth graphite surface. The teddy bear above was drawn using this technique.

Supplies

2B & HB pencils
Kneaded eraser
Smooth drawing paper

Before You Begin

Draw four one-inch squares on smooth drawing paper.

Keep the pencils sharply pointed throughout the exercise.

Square 1 – A Rough Gradation

gradation-1

Fill the upper left corner with the tip of a sharply pointed 2B pencil.

Make several back and forth swings (or hatch marks) with the pencil held in a writing grip at a 45-degree angle.

It should take five or six passes to darken completely, or you’re probably pressing too hard.

Hatch the rest of the first half of the square, but lighten the pressure on the pencil as you approach the diagonal mid point.

When you reach the middle, switch to an HB pencil and try to match the hatching.

Again, make several passes to darken the hatch.

Gradually lighten the strokes as you approach the bottom right corner, but leave the last small tip of the corner untouched.

Square 2 – A Slightly Smoother Gradation

gradation-2

Once again, start the gradation with the 2B pencil in the upper left corner.

Switch to the HB pencil at the diagonal half mark to finish.

This time however, make the gradation smoother by filling in the spaces between the hatch marks with a sharp pencil tip.

You’ll notice that the soft pencil (2B) and the hard pencil (HB) don’t blend perfectly where they meet. You’ll learn to blend them in the next square.

Square 3 – Even Smoother

gradation-3

Create the gradation in the same way as the last square. (Yes, I know this is getting repetitive, but keep going.)

Now, blend away the line where the two pencils meet by hatching the HB slightly over into the 2B’s area just past that line.

Square 4 – Smoothest!

gradation-4

Create the same gradation one more time.

Now hatch the HB over the 2B all the way up into the corner of the dark half.

The harder pencil works as a kind of blender by pushing the softer pencil’s graphite down into the grain of the paper that it skipped over, darkening the value and making the hatch look smoother.