Vis Language - Tone, Mark, Pattern

As a follow on from the line quality session, today's session focussed on mark marking to create tone, surface, texture, depth and quality to drawings. As someone who's work has nearly always previously featured some type of hatching or stipling technique, I really enjoyed getting lost in the meditative process of making repeated marks over and over. Tiring as it is, it's so therapeutic to just get lost in the marks, the constant repetition of muscle movements; as long as restlessness is kept at bay that is!

A Lesson in Contrast, Juxtaposition & Representation

From being unsure last week of how to translate a word into an image, I found today's exercise surprisingly manageable and fun. Creating texture and marks from a word seems to work out easier in my brain than creating a figurative, literal image, and I found the challenge of contrasting the two words in the marks I was making really satisfying.

My Words:

Soft - Hard

Calm - Giddy

Transparent - Solid

I could maybe have played more around with the relationship between the two words on the page, like the circle even digram I made of transparent/solid. I feel like by creating a link or bond between the two could create some really nice compositions, and may say a lot more than the two separate areas of marks. But as a task in experimenting with mark marking, I feel may outcomes work. There's something inherently beautiful and tangible about the marks created, especially on this bottom photo; those collection of tightly drawn squiggles and dots are almost comforting...

I would love to carry on exploring mark making, and really push the different ways I can create marks with a multitude of tools to represent different surfaces and physical forms.