Texture Brushes: Quick Crosshatching

Crosshatching can be a painfully laborious task but with a little know-how and Photoshop's brush engine it's a snap.

First thing to do is create a crosshatch brush. You can make one by simply hatching some parallel lines on a square canvas and defining a brush (Command-a for Mac or Crtl-a on Windows then Edit> Define Brush Preset...) To the left is an example of the brush I made. Now select the new preset in the brushes pallet and make these settings:

Brush Tip Shape

Spacing: 37%

Shape Dynamics

Angel Jitter: 50%

Control: Direction

Everything else off or 0%

Everything else in the Brushes Palette should be unchecked, though smoothing can be checked.

Now, there are two ways to use this brush, by dragging a stroke across the canvas and by clicking with a mouse or tapping with a Wacom pen. When crosshatching a large area you'll want to pull a series of long strokes parallel with one another (example 1). Once you get the area you want evenly filled you can then start clicking or tapping to add darker areas (example 2), this method gives it a more organic look. Finally you can change the brush color to white and click/tap in highlight areas (example 3).

The Crosshatch Brush I made for Photoshop can be downloaded from the link below. Feel free to use it for personal or commercial work. Note the license information below.

The Pixelgun Crosshatching Brush by Dave Anderson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license are as follows: Licensees may not sell or charge money for the Pixelgun Crosshatching Brush, for the distribution of the Pixelgun Crosshatching Brush, or for any media on which the Pixelgun Crosshatching Brush is distributed without the written permission of Dave Anderson. The Pixelgun Crosshatching Brush is free to use for creating personal or commercial work.