A newbie says hi to everyone,

I'm glad to find this site ! The first thing I'd like to ask here is if anyone know to use photoshop to create the cross hatching stuffs. I'm just a (not so good) comic, cartoonist wannabe and find the cross hatch thing is too time consume ( and I clummsy with it ). I wish I can get around it by something that's convenient or premade by graphic sw so I just have to apply it to my scanned pics.

Welcome aboard dyke..

I don't know what version of Photoshop you have but I have CS2. If you go to "Filter", "Brush Strokes" and then "Crosshatch", you can select the stroke length, sharpness and strength..

The only way to get good at crosshatching is to keep practicing. I am no good at it and my lines always curve but I wouldn't feel right using a graphics program and posting it unless I specified what I did when I posted it. I love Photoshop but it rather defeats my purpose of learning to draw. Photoshop is sooo much easier.

I hope the instructions helped.

Have fun here. This is a wonderful place..

Welcome to Drawspace dyke.

I agree with Cyn.....I too would love to be a Cartoonist one day ...but the first thing I have learned to be a Cartoonist and out of respect for other cartoonists is we first must learn and practise the basics of drawing...I personally prefer to free hand draw everything I do.....as Cyn said this is a wonderful place and a great place to learn....I am drawing things now I never imagined I could draw....considering the only thing I could draw when I started was Fred Flintstone...

Best of luck...Brian.

Thank you all,

Cyn, I have CS2 as well but it doesn't really help. It cross hatchs the whole pic while I just need the background darken, especially it creates too uniformly every stroke so it doesn't look right (and boring)

You're both right. I keep go on practicing

Cant you just mask off the part that you want cross hatched?

Do you mean tones in comic books?

I don't think there's a way to crosshatch on the computer. It's probably easier on paper.

There are a couple of filters you can use in Photoshop, but neither of them is very valuable. I've been an illustrator and a cartoonist for years for a living (along with other art trades to keep body and soul together), and I'm okay at crosshatching, but I'd love to find a short cut. I had good luck years ago with Inklination, but, alas, it's no longer being produced. Andromeda Screens is clunky and has few controls. Flaming Pear India Ink is a bit better, but still does not allow you to refine the effect enough to do much with it.

I can still open Inklination in an old version of Photoshop, but now it seems to insist on adding halftones to the cross-hatching, defeating the purpose. I'm not sure if this is some new anomaly, or if my memory has simply played me false. At any rate, it's no use if I can't figure out what I'm doing different.

Illustrator can give you a decent – not great – stipple, but it's cross-hatch effect is pretty useless.

I think any way of getting the effect you want is fair, short of stealing somebody else's work. Of course, "swiping" is often done, usually without apology. But it's no way to achieve any kind of greatness.

Looks like we're all going to have to keep doing it by hand for a while.

One shortcut I used to use was a cross-hatch Zipatone; I could lay down the basic tones, then work over it for modulation. Saved a lot of time and made a nice, unmottled gradation easier. Unfortunately, Zipatone is another of those traditional media that is gone forever.

The greatest loss has been the Osmoroid cartridge pen with copperplate nib. When I discovered the fluidity of that instrument vs. the rigidity of the Rapidograph I thought I'd been set free. But NOBODY is making any REAL flexible pen nibs any more for fountain pens. Osmoroid has been bought from the British firm and is made in China, but the word is it's not a patch on the old product.

So, failing that, let me urge you to try the old-fashioned flexible nibs for dip pens. Much more of a nuisance and always the danger of a drip, but a far more satisfying line quality.

There are a lot of different ways to approach crosshatch, from the free-form scribbles of Charles Dana Gibson – though very PRECISE scribbles – to the feathering of the comic books. I’ve studied both, and half fallen short with both, though I have my moments.

Now, I guess, I must abandon my computer and finish my crosshatch lighting by hand.

Yours truly,

John Mayer