The Secrets to Drawing: Basic Drawing Techniques
Lesson Description
Lesson Ten of The Secrets to Drawing Course introduces students to the essential techniques used to apply value, texture, and refinement to a drawing. While earlier lessons focused on understanding the elements of art and building structural skills, this lesson shifts attention to how marks are made—the specific methods artists use to bring depth, form, and detail to their work.
The lesson highlights six core techniques that appear across nearly every style of drawing: hatching, cross-hatching, blending, rendering, random line application, and stippling. Each of these approaches provides a unique way to build tone and texture, and each can dramatically influence the final appearance of a drawing. Through clear demonstrations and guided practice, students gain the skills to select and apply these techniques with intention and confidence.
Hatching: Building Value with Directional Lines
The lesson begins with hatching, one of the most fundamental drawing techniques. Hatching involves using groups of parallel lines to build areas of tone. Students learn how the spacing, direction, and pressure of their lines affect the darkness and texture of the value they create.
The lesson explains how even simple hatched lines can describe light, shadow, and form when applied thoughtfully. Students are encouraged to experiment with line direction to complement the subject’s contours or to emphasize movement and flow within the drawing. This technique forms the foundation for more advanced methods that build upon it.
Cross-Hatching: Expanding Depth and Complexity
After exploring hatching, the lesson transitions to cross-hatching, a technique that layers sets of parallel lines at varying angles. By intersecting lines, artists can create richer, more complex areas of value and a wider tonal range.
Students observe how cross-hatching allows for smooth transitions and subtle shading when applied gradually, or bold, textured shadows when used more densely. The lesson demonstrates how changing the angle or density of the line layers gives artists tremendous control, making cross-hatching especially useful for detailed subjects like portraits, architectural forms, or organic textures.
Blending: Smoothing Transitions for Soft Value
Next, students explore blending, a technique that creates smooth, gradual transitions between values. Using tools such as blending stumps, tissue, or controlled finger blending, artists can soften the look of pencil marks and develop realistic shading.
The lesson explains how blending can be used sparingly for subtle gradations or heavily for polished, highly rendered surfaces. Students also learn the importance of layering graphite before blending, maintaining clean edges, and avoiding overworking areas that can become muddy. This technique is particularly valuable when drawing skin tones, delicate shadows, or rounded forms.
Rendering: Combining Techniques for Realistic Form
With hatching, cross-hatching, and blending introduced, the lesson moves into rendering—the overall process of developing a drawing with refined values, textures, and edges. Rendering is the result of thoughtful mark-making, patient layering, and careful observation.
Students practice combining multiple techniques to give their drawings structure and realism. The lesson highlights how rendering requires both technical skill and artistic judgment: knowing where to soften edges, where to harden them, where to deepen shadows, and where to preserve highlights. This section provides a bridge between technique and finished artwork, helping students see how foundational skills inform professional-level drawing.
Random Lines: Controlled Chaos and Expressive Texture
The lesson then introduces random line application, a surprisingly effective technique for creating texture and subtle value through spontaneous, varied strokes. Although the lines appear loose and organic, students learn how to maintain control through consistent pressure, layering, and direction.
Random line techniques are ideal for subjects such as hair, foliage, fur, and stone textures. Students explore how these marks can make a drawing feel lively and expressive while still capturing accurate form and value.
Stippling: Creating Tone with Dots
The final technique covered in the lesson is stippling, which uses small dots to build value. Stippling is a precise, meditative process that requires patience but delivers beautifully controlled results. By varying the density and grouping of dots, artists create subtle gradients and delicate textures.
Students learn how stippling can produce clean, crisp surfaces and is especially effective for botanical subjects, ink drawings, and technical illustrations. This technique stands apart for its refined look and its ability to create luminous value transitions without visible lines.
Expanding the Artist’s Technical Toolkit
By the end of Lesson Ten, students have explored six versatile drawing techniques that will support them throughout their artistic journey. These methods give artists the freedom to choose the visual language that best suits their subject, style, and creative goals. With these skills, students are prepared to approach future drawings with greater confidence, control, and expressive possibility.
Lesson Materials
White drawing paper, soft graphite, eraser, blending stump, paper towel, drawing pens (ink).
Lesson Resources
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Founder of The Virtual Instructor, artist and teacher. Matt makes learning art easy to understand and enjoyable.
I love the way each one sets a different mood. While blending looks the most realistic, hatching makes a clean finish, and stippling looks old-timer style.
Great video. Suggest you show your drawing technique in real time, although short. Hard to see your stroke style in the rapid frame version. Also give us an idea of how long it takes to do the image. And love the jazz! Are you sitting or standing at an easel? Thanks.
I agree with Alfred, just a short show of the drawing stroke used please.
I agree with Alfred. If you could do just a part of each technique in real time it would be easier to understand, esp. for a technique such as stippling. I saw the end result, but am not really sure how to reproduce that! The video was very informative in any case! Thanks much!
really long my arm is killing me and there is eraser stuff un the keyboard, but I still loved the video! my mom didn’t think I was putting a lot of effort into this, but I can’t wait for her to see these five drawings thanks so much!
STIPPLING ROCKS!!!! 🙂
I agree totally!!! What a cool effect stippling is
Problem with playback about two thirds in. Anyone else having this problem?
Great tutorial. I’ve never tried rendering, but I think I would really like that one. I wish I would have learned all of this earlier! Awesome Job Matt.
Nick
I’m on doing this course Matt and before I used to be able to view on my phone sideways so it fills all my phones screen but now its not, it’s just a small square in middle of my screen, it automatically goes to full screen but can only view it vertically!!!!
Hey Matt, what pencil are you using for shading the darker parts in this technique?
Anish
Hey Matt, what pencil are you using for shading the darker parts in the rendering technique?
Anish
Hi Anish,
I am using a General’s Layout pencil. Love this pencil! You can pick up a pack of 12 on Amazon.
What type of pen dis you use for the stippling?
I am unable to watch with the sound on because of the background music added in. Previous videos did not have this. (I have brain injury and can’t filter out voice from other sounds, so it is all a muddle). Do most videos have background music added in?
You are such a good teacher!! I am so-o happy to have found this site. I’m learning a lot!!
Matt, I love the clear presentation and your videos. However, as this video is about drawing technique, can you post another tutorial or a slowed down version of this showing the pencil motion for these techniques? Other people have requested the same as well.
Thanks!
Same here, because of the high speed, a lot of frames are cut out, causing the strokes to appear on the image just by hovering the pencil over it, this is not very useful to learn from.
A recording at normal speed is required here.
Hi Matt,
I have to agree, rendering just blew my mind away! For me, it’s like taking a picture and pulling it inside out 🙂 Anyways, I was wondering, where can I find that eraser pencil you’re using for the rendering? Not sure where I could find one with a fine point like that. Any suggestions?
Thanks a lot!
Can people tell if something has been rendered as opposed to the other way?
matt,
1.is it okay to turn the drawing pad around to get consistent “hatching” marks?Is there anything wrong with doing this?
2.do you think that as one get more practice-skill-confidence, the marks will be more consistent smoother??
3.do you think this will avoid having to rotate the pad around….? do professional artist do this? do you think the great artist/masters
rotated their papers,canvas around?
thanks,raquel
Hi Raquel,
Thanks for the questions.
1. No, absolutely not. Draw in the most comfortable position always.
2. Absolutely. Greater control is the result of experience.
3. Yes. It is perfectly acceptable to rotate your surface. It doesn’t matter how anyone else does it. It only matters what works best for you!
Matt, thank you I learned a lot from this video. I did not know about rendering. I love it. I believe there was a question n where to get the eraser pencils. Amazon has them. Thank you again for these courses I love them. Sharon
Really good video for beginners
Love love love this. Thanks so much for putting all these wonderful techniques in one place.
I’m very impressed with the entire site, particularly the structure of the curriculum and the progression.The quality of the teaching is excellent and I really enjoy these courses. However, in this video the background jazz music is very disturbing, so may I suggest you remove it?
Hi Anna,
The music is part of the video and cannot be removed. Some of the videos have music and some don’t. Some people will like some of the music selections and some people won’t.
Would you say rendering is akin to a negative space drawing? If not, would you do more on negative space because that is an underrated style in my opinion. Thanks for helping us get through the quarantine. Be safe.
Hi Rick,
While you may erase some negative space using the rendering approach, it is more about removing material to reveal highlights, leaving the shadows in place.
Hi Matt
Joined last week. Just had the urge to draw in colour pencil shortly after the death of one of my children and it has been a calming experience helping me cope. Hhowever I’m aving trouble seeing the sketches as they are so light. Do you post the sketches anywhere separately? Love the course ..judy
Hi Judy,
So sorry to hear about your loss. No, the drawings are created so that the end result is successful. This sometimes means that the preliminary drawings are light.
Its great to have a speed control in the settings so i can watch what you are doing slowly.
My fav lesson so far!