Types of Lines in Art - artlooklearn.com

Learn how to draw types of lines in art in this easy step by step tutorial. In this free online art lesson learn about hatching, crosshatching, contour hatching, woven hatching, tick hatching, scribble hatching and stippling.

Drawing lines and different types of lines is a basic building block in art which you can learn all about here on my online drawing website. Line quality and using a variety of lines are important art skills to master.

Examples of hatching, crosshatching, contour hatching, woven hatching, scribble hatching, tick hatching and stippling in pencil and colored pencil on white background. — Line Types in Art

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Basic Elements
Line Drawing Techniques
Art Materials
Tips and tricks
Types of Lines Lesson
Transcript
For More Practice
Frequently Asked Questions
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These techniques are all great to use in sketches as well as in finished drawings. Once you become comfortable with these line techniques you can use them to draw or sketch almost anything.

Learning how to draw these different types of lines gives you different ways to add value to a drawing. In addition, they can help you add a sense of texture to your art. Drawing lines to show surface quality is known as implied texture..

Basic Elements

The basic elements of art are color, form, line, shape, space, texture, and value. The line, as one of the basic elements in art, is simply a a long, narrow mark or band.

An artwork can be entirely made of lines or the lines can be a small but important part of a larger piece. Some work contains no lines at all.

Lines can be two-or three-dimensional, descriptive, implied, or abstract. They can also be straight, diagonal, zig zag or curvy.

Line quality is an important consideration when you are drawing or creating art. Is it thick, thin, rough, wavy, curved, sharp, abrupt, sensual or soft?

Line Drawing Techniques

Here are a few basic line techniques that are very helpful to learn. Using these different methods in your drawing can give you a wider range of texture and variety in your art projects.

Hatching

Hatching is a series of parallel lines drawn close to one another to create a sense of shading and texture. The lines can be either regularly spaced or irregularly spaced.

Make lines darker and closer together to show a darker value and lighter and further apart for a lighter value. The direction of your lines can also help indicate different planes of the object or subject that you are drawing.

The overall goal is for the lines to work together to show the shading. Ideally viewers will ignore the lines and read the entire hatched drawing as different areas of tone.

Orange colored pencil hatching lines used to give value to a pitcher. — Hatching in a pitcher

Crosshatching

Similar to hatching, crosshatching begins with a set of parallel lines. Then make another set of parallel lines crossing over the first set but in a different direction.

Repeat the crossing over and repeating lines at different angles several different times, as you see fit. Try crosshatching at right angles and at other angles to vary the darkness and texture.

Again, make lines darker and closer together to show a darker value and lighter and further apart for a lighter value. Crosshatching is a great technique to know because it can help you add value to larger areas very quickly.

Contour Hatching

Contour hatching is simply regular hatching or crosshatching but drawn to follow a curved contour. Any thing that is curved or rounded can be enhanced with contour hatching.

Think about using this drawing technique to help shade in and texture round objects such as a globe, sphere, fruit, eggs and much more. It can also be used on cylindrical objects such as tree trunks, rolling hills or legs and arms.

Red colored pencil drawing of an apple with contour hatching to create volume and dimension. — Contour hatching on an apple

Woven Hatching

Woven hatching is sometimes called patch hatching or basket hatching. It is a series of short parallel lines in one direction next to another group of short parallel lines in a different direction.

The groups of marks can all be perpendicular but they do not necessarily have to be. The lines can ski be crosshatched back into to add density and darker value if desired.

This type of hatched lines appear to have a woven texture, hence the name.

Scribble Hatching

Scribble hatching is a series of loosely scribbled, overlapping lines or squiggles. When drawn into an area, scribble hatching creates value and texture.

To make a darker area add more scribbles and squiggles. To make an area lighter use fewer squiggles and make them farther apart.

When using this technique avoid making the scribbles too regular, or seemingly patterned. Try to keep the squiggles irregular and always unpredictable.

Purple colored pencil is used is loose squiggly lines drawn to make an old barn, showing scribble hatching line technique. — Scribble hatching of an old barn

Red colored pencil is used to make a flower with six pointed petals, tick marks are used to add volume and texture. — Tick hatching used to shade flower

Tick Hatching

In drawing, tick hatching is a series of short “tick” marks placed together in a parallel manner. Tick marks are smaller than lines and larger than stippling dots.

This technique can add a unique texture and value to a drawing. It can be used in any type of drawing.

Make more marks closer together to achieve a darker value and make fewer marks further apart for lighter value and less texture. Marks can also be made perpendicular or at different angles to one another.

Stippling

Stippling is simply adding in many dots to create the light and dark areas of a work. In dark ares add more dots and in lighter areas add fewer dots and leave them further apart.

Stippling in larger areas can be quite a lot of effort but well worth the extra work because of the interesting texture that can be achieved.

Stippling is similar to pointillism in the use of a multitude of dots. Although, pointillism, differs, because it uses dots of different colors to simulate blended colors, whereas stippling uses dots of a single value.

Art Materials

These techniques work well for most drawing materials. They are great to use in drawings with with pencils, graphite, markers, pen and ink, charcoal, and colored pencils.

Tips and tricks

You can mix and match any of these line techniques to create the drawing that you want.
Consider texture - use different line techniques for different materials. For example you might use scribble hatching on a drawing of a soft table cloth while using contour hatching for the hard ceramic bowl that is sitting on it.
Turn your paper as need to make drawing lines easier.

Types of Lines Lesson

Transcript

Read Transcript

Hi everybody. Welcome to Art Look Learn. In this lesson we are going to take a quick look at hatching, crosshatching and a few other really great ways to add lines to our drawings

Let's get started. Hatching is basically a series of parallel lines, when combined together you can use them to shade in your drawings or add texture to your drawings. So in this cube I'm just going to make parallel lines [music].

Where I want it to appear darker I'm going to darken in the lines and make the lines closer together and then where I want it to be lighter I make the lines lighter and further apart.

Now, crosshatching is like hatching except you're going to cross the lines over on each other and I can add two three, four or as many layers as I want to to make my cross hatching. It adds a really nice texture and value to your drawing [music].

Again where I want it to be lighter I make my lines lighter and further apart and if I want it to be darker I make it darker closer together. I can even add in another layer of hatching.

Contour hatching is similar except I'm following a rounded object. I'm following the contour of an object, like in this ellipse.

I'm just following that outer edge of the ellipse to make this happen [music].

Woven hatching is just a series of little patches in which we do the hatching all in different directions.

In my cube example again I'm going to add in the woven hatching just by making little small areas of hatching going all in different directions. I can also use the woven hatching in combination with a cross hatching if I needed to do that and make it even darker in a certain area [music].

It's fun because it adds in a really nice texture that you don't get from other drawing techniques [music].

Scribble hatching is also a really fun drawing technique to use [music]. It is basically just like the name says, scribbling.

Just avoid making your scribbles too regular all in one area, you want to keep your lines a little bit irregular. And then continuing to go over certain areas again and again to make them darker.

Tick hatching is a series of little tick lines and you can make them all in one direction or in different directions [music].

And finally stippling, is basically just a bunch of little dots sometimes we also [think of it as pointillism].

It can be a little bit more time consuming than the other techniques but again, you get a texture that you don't get using the other techniques. So make more dots, make the dots closer together if want a certain area to appear darker.

These line techniques are really great to use in any kind of drawing.

Whether it is in a sketch, a loose sketch that you just want to add in some value to more quickly or in any kind of a finished drawing you can use these techniques as well. They add a lot of value and texture and can just be really fun to use and experiment with.

For More Practice

Draw a simple cylinder or box multiple times, each time add value using a different type of line technique.
Practice using hatching and cross hatching in the same drawing.
Set up a still life, sketch it and then quickly add value with some of these line techniques.
Experiment with different materials. Try woven hatching, tick hatching, scribble hatching and stippling with colored pencils, markers, charcoal and pen and ink.
Try drawing a landscape or a figure, incorporating as many of these different line techniques as possible.

Examples of hatching, crosshatching, contour hatching, woven hatching, scribble hatching, tick hatching and stippling in pencil on white background. — Line types in art

Frequently Asked Questions

What are main types of lines in art?

Hatching, crosshatching, contour hatching, woven hatching, tick hatching, scribble hatching and stippling are some of the basic line types in art.

What is hatching and cross hatching?

Hatching is a series of parallel lines drawn close to one another to create a sense of shading and texture. The lines can be either regularly spaced or irregularly spaced.

Similar to hatching, crosshatching begins with a set of parallel lines. Then make another set of parallel lines crossing over the first set but in a different direction.

What are basic lines in drawing?

Lines are an important element in art and drawing. An artwork can be entirely made of lines or the lines can be a small but important part of a larger piece.

Lines can be two-or three-dimensional, descriptive, implied, or abstract. They can also be straight, diagonal, zig zag or curvy.

Line quality is an important consideration when you are drawing or creating art. Lines can be thick, thin, rough, wavy, curved, sharp, abrupt, sensual or soft.

Are lines one of the basic elements in art?

Yes, the basic elements of art are line, color, form, shape, space, texture, and value.