Mark making and setting new goals in Art

Mark making with pen and pencil has always been an interesting exercise and worth exploring. The act of making certain decisions when describing form and texture holds its very own challenges even without getting to thought of shadow and rendering light.These six 45 minuet studies are the result of an in depth analysis of old masters and observation of various hatching techniques. They were great fun however sufficiently challenging in order to help me develop my hand eye co-ordination and create marks across the page with intent and confidence.

Drawing from the same reference image six times each with time limit of 45min was a great way to study the structure of the face and where the planes of the faces are. The main things we discovered  was that  observation and the way you interpenetrate certain subject matter can aid the development of a personal style. Direct hatching from the get go has proven to be a great exercise in building confidence for visualising shapes and silhouettes. Portraits were a great way to experiment with shapes and mark making and making varied strokes with alternating direction to build and describe form and value. Certain marks can convey certain material and textures with very decisive strokes ranging from thin to broad with also a rang of overlapping lines to make unique qualities in the surfaces of an object. Personally i find describing the material of fabrics and cloth easier than metal something more hard surface or subtle like jelly or bubble. I feel that practising these digitally are equally important to maintain a sufficient muscle memory when transferring to tablet and a cintiq.