[music] Hi guys.
My name is Marcel and today-- "Umm, sir, can you make a video on
how to do crosshatching and the other type?" You know what I mean?
Mm, no, I don't know what you mean. But, sure. Let's make a video about crosshatching or let's just make it a video about rendering your drawings in general. Rendering, in case your unaware, doesn't necessarily have to do something with inferior, overpriced video editing software. I know it's hard to understand it first, but to better explain it, I always compare it with grinding diamonds. You start out by having your rough artwork and by rendering,
you're basically adding details to your artwork more and more until your artwork has reached a finished stage. That's also the dictionary definition of it,
so it's kind of like grinding diamonds until it's perfect. Except there is no perfection in art, of course. So today's video is about how to render your art like a Sir. Or like a lady. or anything in between, I don't judge. And yes, this works with any artwork,
be it human anatomy, objects, robots. Doesn't matter what you're drawing.
You can always add details to it. Today's video is packed. I'll show you what you'll need
in order to get detailed with the art, some simple first steps, how you can improve, and of course,
I'll be showing you how I'm rendering my art at the end. As always, I gave my best to animate some stuff in this video
so it can even be more helpful to you. Making this video took me several weeks
and I would appreciate if you could give me a thumbs up so YouTube recommends my videos to other people out there. And if more people watch my videos,
I'll be able to make even more of them. Just make sure you're subscribed or else,
you'll miss when I upload my next tutorial. So let's start right at the beginning.
What do you need in order to level up your art in detail? [music] If you want to level up your drawings from this
to that, you basically need two things. Firstly, you need to know how to shade. And secondly, you need to know about anatomy. And in case you need some help with that,
I've uploaded tutorials about both already. You can check them out on my channel if you want. Because as you might have guessed, in order to draw like this, it wouldn't hurt to know how a human body works. Also, shading is pretty important as well. Everything that I'll show you today is applicable to trees,
humans, animals -- everything. You just have to understand how it's constructed
in order to draw it. It's the age-old topic of having to learn
how to walk before you can run. Believe me, you don't want to end up like Mr. Sometimes-you-gotta-run-before-you-can-walk-but-can't-even-snap-his-fingers-without-dying. Damn. That's some long-ass name. I searched out some great examples from professional artists
and they also start out by using their basic knowledge about shading before they can start to render their art so detailed
that you want to break down crying and never want to try again. Just to get this out of the way, yes,
there are different ways to render your art There are, for example, artists that like to smudge
their art a bit in order to render smooth shadows. There are tools for that.
Even I myself tried to draw in this style as a kid, but I'm just not into that anymore. The thing is, I just prefer artworks with extreme contrast and that's precisely why in this video,
we'll be focusing on hatching your art because there are ways to get smooth shading
even with hatching. And now, I'm going to show you exactly how this works. So this is basically how hatching works. By drawing many details on an area,
you make that area darker. Pretty easy, right? But like, what's the point? I mean, just paint it black.
Saves a lot of time, right? The answer to that is detail. Of course, hatching looks untidy when you look at it closely,
but when you literally look at the bigger picture, your eyes subconsciously recognizes this pattern as a texture. And that's a whole lot better than just painting it black. You barely get any 3D feeling out of this. And the best part is you can exactly control how dark it gets. Here. Look at this. The tighter the strokes are together,
the darker the area looks and vice versa.
If these lines are further apart, the area looks lighter. So far, so good.
Now, let's get this to the next level. You can make the dark area even darker
by adding horizontal lines. And if you even add some lines across, yeah, you'll get the point.
It gets even darker. And this is the key to change the brightness
anywhere you want to. Let's just make a gradient to practice this. Just like I showed you before, you can space lines out
more and more so they get lighter and lighter. And you can make the dark patterns even darker
by adding some horizontal lines. That way, you can make the darkest part completely black. This was a basic gradient with hatching. And yes, you can use this exact technique
for smooth shading as well. But when you're a digital artist that draws on a tablet,
you'll now wonder, "Why are you using such a time-consuming method
when there are much quicker ways to get this done?" And I've been answering that question a minute ago.
Just listen when I'm speaking. It's the same principle as before. Your eye is subconsciously recognizing all the details,
which in turn makes the artwork look a lot more natural. And yes, that's why some beginners
have the problem that the digital art looks unnatural. Let me show you an example. I've had to work on a very big artwork lately
and for that, I needed to have a big blue gradient and this would've been way easier on a tablet, right? But your eye just recognizes there are many fine intricacies
and strokes in a traditional piece while the digital one looks unnaturally smooth. So basically, if you do it the right way,
crosshatching can look very realistic through the human eye. Anyway, you now know how to shade with hatching, but if you paid attention, you know
that you don't only need shading, but also some anatomy to get that extra detail. And that's precisely what I'll be showing you now. [music] Here's a big amateur mistake. If you start shading your art
but you disregard the shape of your object, your art will become flat. I've seen a YouTube video of an artist that said
he basically had no idea how to shade because he always just copy drawings 1:1,
instead of constructing it first. Kind of makes sense. You have to draw and practice
your object in order to learn how it's built. If you're trying to be the next human printer,
you're just copying everything at once and you don't get this kind of knowledge. So instead of mindlessly shading and hatching away,
you want to curve your shading the same way your object is curved. And this goes for every single part of your object or subject, be it fingers, muscles, and everything else. 3D models can be a saving grace here, so you properly
understand how these single body parts work and how they are curved. But of course, there are instances where you want your art to be flat. For example, when you draw buildings. I've read that some of you want to be manga artist
just like me, so you can definitely keep this in mind, because drawing buildings
is something you need to be able to draw as well. Also, please just stop asking for a tutorial on this. I've already made a video on how to draw buildings
with vanishing points so you can watch this anytime. It's already uploaded on my channel.
Thank you. But this doesn't only go for buildings. For example, mechanical things like robots
also consist of flat planes. The most important part is to hatch
so that it looks natural to your object. Round hatching for round objects
and flat hatching for flat objects. If you wanna practice this,
you can do it with a simple form like a ball. Try hatching it just like I've been showing you. You can just use a ballpoint pen or a pencil.
It's just practice after all. Remember what I said at the beginning? You have to view this like a diamond
that you are grinding till perfection. So it's completely up to you when you want to stop but just as a tip, don't hatch on small objects.
Try drawing big objects so you'd have enough space for little individual lines. Before I'll show you how I'm matching a full artwork,
we need to have a quick talk about art supplies. If you are still practicing, a simple ballpoint pen
is perfectly fine. I'm using them myself when I'm practicing. It's not about the supply, it's about the artist after all. But if you're actually attempting a bigger artwork
that has to be good, you should really get a hold thin liners. The rule of thumb is if they have a size written on them,
they are probably more professional ones. Personally, I only have sizes 0.1 and smaller. Don't take that line out of context. To be perfectly honest, most of them do their job
just fine, so don't worry about brands or something. But if you're really trying to get the best option there is, you should take a look into actually inking with pen nibs. Not even the thinnest liner I have
stands a chance against my Maru pen nib. So if you have a lot of spare money and time,
you can ink with a pen nib. I've linked all of my supplies with with nibs,
nib holder and ink on my website. If you insist, I can make another video
about inking with this as well. Just make sure you subscribe to this channel
so you'll get notified when I upload this video. Now then, let's get inking. [music] So for the last part, I'll show you how I'm approaching this. Before I'm starting, I'll plan out where
I'll be inking outlines and where I'll be hatching. And most of the time, yeah, I'll crosshatch a lot,
so there won't be many outlines here. Next, you'll have to concentrate and visualize your concept,
meaning you have to plan out where your shadows on your artwork will be. So once you know where you'll be shading,
you can hatch away just like I showed you before by hatching along the form of your object. And yes, this is why I said you need knowledge
about A, anatomy 'cause you have to know how
every single body part is curved and B, shading, because you have to know
where the shadows are and where they are not. But what's baffling here is that even this simple approach of hatching
has different styles you could use. For example, there are artists out there
that hatch with their highest precision. They watch out that all of their lines are precisely paralleled to each other
and that they have the exact same line thickness. I know this sounds like overkill,
but remember what I said before. You subconsciously perceive this. If you manage to pull off this level of accuracy
through your whole artwork, you'll have an absolutely mind-blowing illustration
at the end. I tried inking this way when I attempted my Evangelion artwork. I drew every line with a liner so it has the same size. I used a ruler so they are perfectly parallel to each other. But then, I gave up after about five hours on drew the rest per hand. I mean, I painted over it anyway, so who even cares now? But there's also the complete o-- But there's also the complete an-- But there's also the complete opposite to this art
that hatched by just scribbling. This has some mesmerizing, chaotic energy to it
and even though it's a lot less time consuming, you still need to plan the shading in beforehand. And then there's one of my favorite ways of adding details
by just drawing simplistically. I personally love it when artists use a bare minimum of details but the details they are using
have been placed absolutely perfectly. Yes, there is barely any details here compared to the other examples but it's damn hard to make your artwork look detailed
even though you didn't use a lot of details at all. That's something I've strived towards as well. When I compared my old manga volumes that I published, I saw that there was a lot of this chaotic energy
still on the early art. While the later volumes have this cleaner style that I mentioned. Also, screw rulers.
Why did I decide on making this traditionally? This took so much time. Anyways. Thanks for watching. You now know pretty much everything about hatching
and crosshatching you need to start out and in case you want to level up your art even more,
I've got a ton of other tutorials on my channel from drawing clothes to drawing hands
and pretty much everything else you can think of. I've also got a social media where you can check out my personal artworks and a Patreon if you want to go the extra mile. My name is Ben Marcel and I'll see you guys in my next video. Goodbye. [music]
