Forget AI, young Malaysian artist celebrates the lost art of drawing

What started as a form of therapy to cure her insomnia has helped a young woman shape a career in art.

Artist Khairunnisa Mohd Izham, 24, better known as Khai, has built up a sizeable collection of original drawings and prints using the hatching technique.

Old buildings, colonial architecture and kampung houses – drawn with intricate detail – are some of her choice subjects.

Khai, who resides in Ipoh, Perak, recalls when she started sketching in 2018, she did it purely for fun and relaxation purposes but little did she realise her sketches and drawings would lead her to a full-time art career.

“I was interested in art since young but never really took it seriously. In 2018 when I was in university, I had insomnia and found it difficult to sleep. I then saw a doctor who advised me to pursue an activity that can relax my mind. That was when I took to sketching,” says Khai, who has a degree in medical sciences.

She found herself drawn towards using the hatching and crosshatching technique as it made her feel calm and relaxed.

Today, Khai has no regrets about the career path. Since becoming active on TikTok two years ago, she has accumulated over 225,000 followers while the videos of her works have garnered over four million “likes”.

“Perhaps not many know about this artistic style (hatching), so I guess when I started sharing my works on social media I indirectly introduced this concept to the general public.”

All about technique

“When I first started using this (hatching) technique, I focused mainly on sketching buildings. I produced my first proper sketch, of a Victorian-style house, in February 2019,” says Khai, adding that she learned the finer points of the technique via videos posted on the Internet and social media by local and international artists.

Using a black-inked pigment pen to draw, Khai also applies various other techniques in her sketching to emphasise the linear element. This way, the shading aspect in all her works comes to the fore and this has now become her trademark as a hatching artist.

“It’s quite difficult to produce such drawings because we need to create the shape, parallel lines and cross lines. The lines can be vertical, horizontal or inclined.

“These lines can also be ‘adjusted’ to create the effects we want … for instance, when the parallel lines are drawn close to each other, it creates a darker effect while lines that have more space in between them create light tones,” says Khai, whose father is a portrait artist.

She adds it takes her four to five weeks to complete a drawing (on an A2-sized canvas) and up to three months on an A1-sized canvas.

“One has to be meticulous, patient and disciplined when drawing with a pen using the hatching technique as we will be forced to redo the whole thing if we make the slightest mistake,” she points out, adding that initially, she used charcoal, pencils, water colour and acrylic paints for her drawings but later switched to pens.

“Using a pen allows me to control my sketching and also makes my drawings look more alive, and it is also more suitable for this (hatching) technique.”