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.

Hachures.jpg