After chasing triangles around the house and head, Max and I decided it was time to learn some new "techne" (pace Jacques Ellul) with our colored pencils. We started by noticing how color basically "covers" the white or colorless space on a sheet of paper. Usually, when we color with our colored pencils, we cover the space in tightly-scribbled lines which go back and forth.
Crosshatching allows to to vary the depth, hue, and richness of the color by essentially recoloring the same area in a different direction.
Cross hatching uses lines coming from 4 completely different directions. But you can also use just one layer of lines, or 2, which some call 1/4 hatching and 1/2 hatching respectively. Each different kind of cross hatching provides different shaded values and influences how much additional color will penetrate the existing color.
My tessellated beast.
We decided to use tessellations to create some shapes and figures. Then we sketched our tessellations onto white paper with lead pencils and started using plain old colored pencils to color them in.
For the multi-colored spaces, I used 3/4 hatching and 1/2 hatching more than cross hatching because I wanted a messy scribbled effect- nothing too clean and pristine.
The element of play never left our drawing session; both of us were clearly playing around with the effects of this technique on color and light and the third dimension.
"Fire Flower" by Max
Max really enjoyed "making the colors richer" so he tended to complete his crosshatches and then go around the borders to clean up the lines.
His tessellated worm (though misspelled by yours truly lazy) certainly looked "richer" and more colorful than our past colored pencil play.
