Project 1: Mark making

This is project one - mark making.

• How did holding your pen or pencil in a different way affect your drawing?

I found holding a pencil closer to the tip allowed really precise mark making and bolder lines as pressure was easier to gauge. However, it did not have the lighter shade spectrum that holding a pencil at its end did. Although holding a pencil this way had less control but a finer mark.

• Which drawing tools suited the different mark making techniques you used?

I found that charcoal was brilliant for large, bold marks and suggesting shape. It failed to manage finer marks such as hatching and cross-hatching like a pencil or pen and ink did. However, charcoal, pastel and wax crayon were good for stippling.

• Did you find that any marks or tools you used matched particular emotions or feelings?

I found that charcoal gave a really bold yet cold presence but was also quite calming, opposed to ink and pen which conveyed far more of a scratchy energeticness. 

• How did the introduction of colour affect your mark making?

I found that using colour allowed me to be bolder with my non-colour marks such as charcoal because it gave me the ability to off-set the marks with a finer mark of colour. I found mark making in colour quite interesting as I have never done it before.

• Which of these experiments have you found most interesting and rewarding?

I found the experiment that encouraged the use of unusual tools particularly rewarding. The tools I used were a feather, a stick, a piece of straw, a smaller stick, a cable tie and wax crayons. I think I achieved my best marks with these as I found them quite diverse. Applying a large amount of pressure gave a brush-like quality, really bold marks and line but also could be used with less pressure to get fine marks like a nib.

Vincent Van Gogh, Winter Garden, March 1884, pen and ink & graphite on paper.

Here the artist has used pen and ink in mostly a horizontal manner in a number of strokes to cover the width of the piece similar to how a printer prints creating darker areas were  strokes meet suggesting tuffs of grass.

 Graphite is used patchily to capture some of the barks texture as well as to suggest the trunks curvature with the marks ruining across the trunk. Lines running across the tree in ink act as contour lines.

The lighter marks seem to of been drawn back in to the piece over the graphite with a putty rubber perhaps.