Crosshatching as energy carrier

William Blake after Fuseli, Head of a Damned Soul, c1789-90

When looking closely at some of the images in the 'William Blake's Universe' exhibition at the Cambridge University Fitzwilliam Museum, I was entranced by the various uses of cross hatching. In particular Blake's rendering of the image chosen for the exhibition poster, had me gazing closely at its surface and as I did my gaze became lost in the movement of one surface into the next, as the cross hatching overlapped and its curved lines not only made form but produced energy at the same time. 

Hendrick Goltzius 

Some time ago I put up a post on cross contour drawing but when I did I failed to open out how powerfully some artists had used cross hatching to energise surfaces and create energy fields. Some artists in particular, such as Hendrick Goltzius, who was the leading Dutch engraver of the early Baroque period, specialised in using these techniques. Rembrandt for instance encouraged his students to copy Goltzius engravings as a way to learn how to cross-hatch. Notice how the engraved lines both follow the form and give an indication of tone. However it is in pen and ink and chalk drawings that we see the technique used at its most subtlest.  

Head of Mercury: Hendrick Goltzius 

Goltzius had developed his engraving technique by exerting a change in pressure as he pushed the graver through the metal. This meant that as it cut through he could 'swell' the line in order to make it give a better impression of a rounded three dimensional form. He then began to emulate his engravings in pen and ink, the 'Head of Mercury' being an amazing example of expression and control, welded together If you look at the drawing closely, the flow of energy made by surfaces as they follow masses moving, in and out of shadow is quite exhilarating. 

Rubens

Rubens: Detail

If you look at the Rubens drawing above, you can see how the pen strokes create compacted energy, their slight curvature suggesting the soft curves of the body, the depicting of the movement of light to dark necessitates points of overlap, suggesting a constant flow of one field of energy into another. 

Durer uses this technique to both suggest mass and texture. The hair texture dances to one set of rhythmic dynamics, whilst the planes of the head are suggested by another set of rhythmically set out lines. What appears at a distance to be a solidly modelled head, on closer inspection becomes a series of energy fields. 

Durer

Durer: Detail of energy movements

Jean-Baptiste Greuze's drawing, 'The Ungrateful Son', is a very good example of how planar reinforcement using hatched lines, is not just a powerful explainer of how masses work within a complex solid such as a head, but can also be a way to demonstrate how energy fields can interact and overlap.  

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Ungrateful Son, ca. 1777

Greuze, The Ungrateful Son: detail

Greuze has a very strong grasp of three dimensional form, each line reinforcing the head's planar structure, but we can also see that complex rhythms are made as these contour hugging lines overlap. The movement of marks as they define the brow, the eye socket, the cheek and the nose, chin and mouth, is not unlike currents or eddies in a stream flowing over rocks. These marks also link one facial form to another; if you begin by looking at the bridge of the nose, you can drop down its side and slide over the cheek, falling towards the mouth and then visually tumble down towards the chin and neck. An idea of the body as landscape emerges the closer you get to the drawing. 

The body's energy field

I have begun to think about how these various energy fields overlap. Perhaps this was triggered in my head by listening to obituaries of Professor Higgs who died last week and the various accounts of the Higgs field. This is a field of energy that is accompanied by the Higgs boson, used by the field to interact with other particles, such as electrons. This interaction gives weight to the particles and hence 'mass' comes into being as well as energy. 

Mapping the energy of a concrete block in the sea wall

Gradually my thoughts about the energy of seeing are becoming fused with the energy inside mass and how it sits within the space that surrounds it. 

Perceptual study of a toy dinosaur found in the woods

I am still working on how to visualise the inner body, so will be trying to add in these thoughts about energy mass, as I try to fuse the ageing awareness of a body into the landscapes that it remembers. But for now this is where that particular strand of thinking has settled. 

The ageing body and a memory

Aways so much to do, always so many things to reconcile, but as always so many exciting things to get involved with.  

See also:

Cross contour drawing

Visualising Energy Flow

Visualising energy flow part two

Signs of life in flowing line drawings

Quantum entanglement