Successful hatching techniques....

[Davicho]

I'm wonder what the process of successful hatching entails. I feel like when I hatch, I pretty much just randomly place lines while trying to keep the shape of the object sort of in mind. I just think to do it successfully it should be much more calculated than that.

My basic drawing teacher would say to 'hatch in the direction of the object/form'. I don't really get what that means...say I'm hatching on a spherical object...should the individual lines be 'curved' in nature, or should I angle the hatching layers against each other at differant angles so that they create a curved effect?

Maybe I'll post some examples of my hatching later to get some feedback on what I'm doing wrong.

[Favila]

"PEN DRAWING AN ILLUSTRATED TREATISE"
BY CHARLES D. MAGINNIS

you can find this book in the project guttenberg webpage, it has a lot of talk about hatching

[Elwell]

For beautiful controlled hatching, check out R. Crumb's work.

[dbclemons]

I'd also recommend Arthur Guptill's book "Rendering in Pen & Ink" (http://www.amazon.com/Rendering-Pen-Arthur-Leighton-Guptill/dp/0823045307)as a excellent resource for drawing techniques with line. My local library has a copy, so you might look through the shelves of yours first. Here's an illustration by J.M. Flagg from the book that shows not just hatching but line width variation, spacing, and direction changes.

[squidmonk3j]

i second dbclemons' suggestion. best book on inking technique ever printed:)