Check and Log: Making Marks

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


Holding the pencil near the end and dangling it onto the paper produced some nice expressive marks with the grainy texture of the paper showing through. It was quite difficult to accurately control the tip when drawing in this way. Holding the pencil near the tip gave finer control and varying the pressure meant the marks could get quite intense and strong. 



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



Scribbling, hatching and stippling with pigment liners worked well and could be used to create form. Scribbling and hatching in pencil also worked well and a wide variety of marks could be produced. I made some interesting marks by walking the tip of a graphite stick across the paper. Hatching with conte' and thick charcoal sticks seemed very clumsy and I didn't like the results. 

Compressed charcoal made a very intense dark tone when built up. Using a finger I could make strong directional marks coming out from an area of dark charcoal. I liked using the side of the compressed charcoal as the grain of the paper created an interesting texture and overlapping adjacent sweeps of charcoal allowed variations in tone. Lifting out charcoal or graphite with the putty rubber also produced interesting gradations in tone and directional marks.

A dip pen with ink lent it self well to producing many different types of marks and this could give it more potential than the drawing pens to be expressive. 

Pencil works best for tentative feathery marks and there is much more possible variation in intensity with this and graphite that there is with drawing pen.

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

Angular marks made with a Biro held near the nib and pressing hard into the paper felt quite aggressive and almost angry. Similar frenzied mark making could be achieved with a sharp pencil held near the nib. On the other hand using a graphite stick, soft pencil or pencil crayon held lightly and describing soft circular motion produced light marks suffused with a sense of calm.

How did the introduction of colour affect your mark making?

Colour added an extra dimension to the mark making and made me more conscious of the layering of different marks as it was possible to mix colours on the paper by cross hatching different colours across each other or building stippling of different colours up together.

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

I particularly liked the phase of experimentation and discovered some effects I might never have come across by using a variety of other drawing implements (such as pencil, charcoal, graphite sticks) to apply ink from a pot.

I also enjoyed the freedom of experimenting with charcoal without any pressure to produce a representational image.