_____________FlawlessVelocity___________

7 mei 2014

Stump-blending VS Crosshatching

Deze keer een artikel die ik zelf heb geschreven over het onderwerp tekenen , het is wel in het engels maar heeft daardoor een breder bereik, enjoy :-)

Blending vs. Crosshatching

In the old days crosshatching was always used to convey infromation in drawings to show textures, light and dark, forms and distance. Today it is still in use but more by the traditional artist rather than the 'modern' artist.
The appeal of crosshatching is still that it brings a drawing to life, which is its purpose on a piece of flat paper and getting this 3D looks. There is a 'new' trend that mostly came up due to the age of photography and the possibility to work in detail on a scene that would be much harder otherwise in a real life drawing situation, that all has to do with with people ,animals and objects moving and the changing of light scenery.

I'm talking about stump blending in drawing to convey information in such a way that it looks 3D but also quite detailed, even so far as hyper-realism as it's called. To my opinion ,stump blending has it's use in the right places in drawing, but it's wildly popular to use it for every little detail while rendering out everything mostly by use of photos and it shows.

Stump blending in so doing ,takes the life out of drawing in such a way that the purpose of a drawing is destroyed, mainly the expression of visual information in line on paper. A photograph should be just that, a drawing should be all about line ,that is the purpose also of crosshatching, to work with line and give a drawing life.

So what we can see with stump blending is an exclusive use of photographs and copying everything that's in the picture ,while drawing with line from life or even photographs you want to express the most important information on paper in as quick and efficient manner as possible and still have this 3D feel.

When you really know drawing and get to see these stump blending kind of drawings ,you see all kinds of flaws in it, especially if somebody really can draw or not. Even the hard shades of a flashlight is copied by these "blending artists" because they lack knowledge of form which you aquire by drawing in line and practice live drawing. Any good draughtsman sees and knows this, the layman just sees the stump blended drawing and can only comment like ' wow, this looks just like a photograph' .... in my opinion that's not a compliment , a big fail even in draughtsmanship.

Anyone who can truly draw use line to convey visual information and tools like a brush, a kneaded eraser and some good paper to get to a real drawing.
An eraser is used very sparingly and only for real disturbing lines, while a kneaded eraser is used also for drawing and getting highlights out, the rest is just using lines and crosshatching with a pencil, any blending that really needs be done is mostly some rubbing with your finger on the appropriate spot ,some use of a brush and thats it.

Blending with the stump makes details in a drawing look 'good' but mostly doesn't make the drawing come alive, it always has this copied feel to it and that just doesn't belong to drawing. I know this is a kick in the teeth to those stump-blending artists out there but the truth is , a real good drawing is timeless and always interesting also due to lively lines ,no matter how old that drawing is.

Now get drawing, regards , Marchel