Hachuring tests

[Meton]

I think hachuring is one of the most beautiful and intriguing styles to use for representing topography in map. For a long time I've wanted to try it myself, and now finally I decided to do it and make some test maps. I thought it would be nice to share them here, as I haven't seem (maybe I just haven't found) conversation about hachuring. Well, I have seen some caterpillar style mountains, but I'm interested to draw more than just ridges with hachures. The picture attached is scan of A4 paper, showing the lower half (upper part was not relevant). All these are drawn by hand with Pigma Microns.

I'm interested to hear if someone has comments or ideas or knowledge how to make hachures work even better!

The upper map is mostly just a copy of a part of map from a 1850's French atlas. By redrawing I tried to get a grasp of the style and I think I did, however the hachures are more like traditional shading in some parts. The scale is quite small, so the mountains are mainly just ridges. But I think the effect os working. The area is located in the French alps, near Grenoble.

The upper right drawing was a trial to copy a mountain top from a large scale map - but I didn't start properly, I think, so I didn't continue it. You can forget it.

The map in the bottom was drawn after the others, and it is completely my own creation. I think the hachures work better in a larger scale, showing the mountains a lot closer than in the upper map. There's a mountain road for scale. I really like that map, I think it works well, and it was fun to do. But still, I think it could be better, but not sure how. I think one thing would be to contain more white on top of the ridges, like on the upper map.

In both of these maps the idea behind the hachuring is that shorther hachure means a steeper slope, and the width of the hachure is linked to the aspect of the slope, like shading. And of course, the hachures run always down the slope.

So what do you think? I think it would be fun to make a proper map some day entirely with hachures.

[Elterio Delgard]

I believe as well it is a quite efficient way to draw mountains and I will admit that my first maps used such a style. Howver it is quite tricky and I was not quite able to make it look right.


You on the other hand, you seem to have a good start but I still have one little point to stress out, that is just like the map I showed you there are some lines that are more confusing than anything else. I have highlighted them in red and, if you look back at my map, maybe you will understand what I mean by confusing.

[Meton]

Thank you for your feedback!

You're right, that part is definitely confusing. Those lines were meant to represent steep cliffs, where the slope is almost vertical. That kind of horizontal lines have been used in some hachured maps but in my version they are not looking like the way they should. I have to do more testing for drawing the steepest places.

[Ilanthar]

Very nice and quite inspiring.
What about something like this for cliffs?

[srt19170]

I think hachures are really something a little different than what you've done (at least in the bottom drawing). You're using hatching to create shading and relief. Hachure uses the thickness and length of the hatching lines to indicate slope.

Hachures are strokes (short line segments or curves) drawn in the direction of the steepest slope (the aspect direction).[1] Steeper slopes are represented by thicker, shorter strokes, while gentler slopes are represented by thinner, longer and farther apart strokes. A very gentle slope or a flat area, like the top of a hill, are usually left blank.

Here's an example of a map using what I think of as hachure:

(This is a map of the first battle of Manassas, btw.)

That said, I think your bottom map style looks pretty good.

[Meton]

I think hachures are really something a little different than what you've done (at least in the bottom drawing). You're using hatching to create shading and relief. Hachure uses the thickness and length of the hatching lines to indicate slope.



Here's an example of a map using what I think of as hachure:

(This is a map of the first battle of Manassas, btw.)

That said, I think your bottom map style looks pretty good.

Well, the thing is that there are two different ways to do hachuring. The first one is the style you explained there, where the thickness and length of the line indicates just the slope angle - in steeper slopes the lines are thicker and shorter, like you said. The other style is that the width of the line indicates primarily the aspect of the slope, so it is more like shading. This is the style I used in those maps in the first post to this thread. In this second style the thickness can also be used to indicate steepness of slope, but not as much.

The two different types of hachuring are informatively experessed in the book Basic Cartography. On the left side are the principles of the two techinques, and on the right are examples, the same area in both styles.



The decision between which style to use depends mainly of the scale of the map. When depicting mountain ranges, where there are many slopes to many directions, the map is quite unreadable without the shading effect. With the second style it's more understandable, like in the example of the book. But when depicting just some hills or separate mountains, the first technique works quite well or even better. For example in that battle map there isn't really possibility for misinterpreting the aspects of the slopes, so its more practical to use the hachuring just to indicate slope steepness, like it has been done.

Anyway, thank you!

Very nice and quite inspiring.
What about something like this for cliffs?

Thank you Ilanthar. This definitely looks like a cliff and it follows the rules of hachuring in the sense that the steep part has thicker lines. However, in both ways of hachuring, that exact type of drawing is not applicable, because the hachures are derived from the contours. A row of hachures is always at the same altitude level between two (usually not visualised) contours. This is also shown in the example of the book. (I personally want to try to do the hachuring by following the contours, but I think you can get perfectly working visualisation with lines that don't follow the contours, if you like). Of course, in the flat and almost flat areas the drawing of the hachuring is not done, and the contours can't be traced anymore. This can be seen in the battle map.

So, about the cliffs. I understood after thinking about this that my problem with the steep slopes was connected the decision of using the hachuring style 2, the one with the shading effect. When using the other way, the cliffs are quite easy, because you just add more thickness and darkness to steepest places. But in the other style, thickness also indicates the aspect, so it's not so easy. Because the hachures follow the contours, the lines are shorter in steep places, but the control of shading brings problems. Should a cliff in the "light" side be lighter than the surrounding slope or completely white? Or darker? Should the cliff be separated visually or just drawn with hachures?

I made some test drawings, beautifully compiled in Microsoft Paint.



1. I tried to stay with hachures in the slopes. In the steep parts I also draw the lines a bit closer together, so the cliff became a bit darker. I think it works quite well, but the drawing wasn't very well planned.
2. The same thing but I enchanced the top of the cliff with a pencil so if it was better. Maybe it is.
3. I tried to draw the cliff separately - but I think this looks horrible. The cliff is too dark on the light side, or at least with too dark borders, and simply doesn't look correct.
4. The same techinque as in number 1, but better planned. I think this techinque with only the hachures is decent. The only problem is, that in the "light" side the cliff could be seen as a shadowed slope to the other direction.
5. (from a scan) I tried something similar as in number 3, but being careful with the cliff and leaving the cliff completely white on the light side. Maybe it works, not sure. Problem is, that white usually indicates flat areas.
6. I also tried the other way to draw hachures, without the aspect shading. Works very well on one hill and the cliffs are easy to draw with just hachuring.

I think I will continue with style used in 4. Also the style without shading was quite nice (6). The separately drawn cliffs are difficult and I have to test more to get some decent results.

Whoah, that became a lot of text and thoughts.

[markem]

Extremely neat! This is a lot like the old Avalon Hill games and/or Strategic Simulations maps. I finally figured out that their hills were composed of several smaller pieces that could be put together differently. You may want to go look at Anzio or Stalingrad or even Blitzkreig. All of them use this style of drawing.

But yours really are a lot better in many ways. :-)

[damonjynx]

Kudos to you my friend! I've not the skill or patience to do what you're doing, though I admire the style greatly. I wholeheartedly agree with you re No's 4 & 6, they are definitely the nicest looking examples.

[Meton]

Extremely neat! This is a lot like the old Avalon Hill games and/or Strategic Simulations maps. I finally figured out that their hills were composed of several smaller pieces that could be put together differently. You may want to go look at Anzio or Stalingrad or even Blitzkreig. All of them use this style of drawing.

But yours really are a lot better in many ways. :-)

Kudos to you my friend! I've not the skill or patience to do what you're doing, though I admire the style greatly. I wholeheartedly agree with you re No's 4 & 6, they are definitely the nicest looking examples.

Thanks a lot! It's great to hear that you've find these test interesting. This style is certainly a bit challenging - it's easily messy, not understandable or just looking weird. But thank you, it seems I'm going to a good direction.

I also did one more recent test with hachuring. I tried to map a real-life area, the terrain around lake Aulangonjärvi in Finland, very close to where I live. (if interested, it's there). I used a print of a 1:20 000 base map from the area, made by National land survey of Finland. I drew one row of hachures for every 5 metre interval, which is the interval of the contours in the base map. In the end I think I shouldn't have been so attached to the contours, because the map is sometimes a bit difficult to understand. Next time I'll take more artistic liberties and do some generalisation.

In this map I used the shading effect, as in the example number 4. It works quite well, but I think that for this kind of terrain and scale the "vertical illumination" as in example 6 would be better. One reason is that the relatively steep cliffs in the south-east corner of the lake are not standing out as they should be, because they are to the "light" side of the shading effect. Perhaps I will do later another version of the map without the aspect shading.

[ChickPea]

Looks good.