Kat Jazz Illustration Learning Log: Mark Making

Our next project was to explore MARK MAKING! My wonderful mum across the equator recommended that I read a book called: Form, Space and Vision by Graham Collier. I am very grateful for this recommendation as it gave me a new perspective on how to look at marks, how to understand them and therefore how to consider using them in my work. I have only read chapter one (of nine!!!) in which he talks about marks and space, which he considers to be the figure-ground fundamental.

He opens the chapter with a quote by Wassily Kandinsky, which says:

“ Form alone can exist in its own right as the representation of an object (real or unreal) or as the purely abstract delimitation of space or surface.”

When I first read this quote I had absolutely NO idea what was being said and although I have a long way to go in understanding the depth of the meaning behind this quote, I feel through reading chapter one if this book that I have at least understood it at a surface level as Collier consistently highlights how space is separated from forms using drawing marks or stain and they therefore are the tools that provide that boundary around a form or within the form itself.

I realised early one that I had little real understanding of drawing marks and that understanding mark making is essential to understanding the work of influential artists and in creating my own art. Collier uses plentiful examples from artists such as Henri Moore, Paul Klee, Jackson Pollock and others to demonstrate the language of mark making. He highlights that just as in spoken language, a drawing evokes a dialogue between itself and its viewer and therefore becoming familiar with the physical structure of point, line and area is like learning how to spell or pronounce a few essential words of a new language.

Collier defines The Basic Drawing Marks as POINT, LINE and AREA:

· Point: the mark initially made as the drawing instrument touches the surface and is removed without making any directional progress over the ground. The action can be performed deliberately or casually, and can result in sharp, speck-like points or ones that are more blunted and diffuse - both representing concentrations of stain precisely located in space, and therefore fixed in time.

Jean Dubuffet. 1959. Lithograph

The point, therefore, as a drawing mark, can be effectively used to specify location, to imply time and to indicate direction. He uses the drawing by Jean Dubuffet below to demonstrate how a drawing can be made up almost entirely of point markings.

· LINE: is the result of a point of stain being pulled, pushed, or stroked, calmly or excitedly, for long or short distances.

The stain may be more or less concentrated as it moves, producing a tighter or looser line.

The tighter or more compact the stain, the faster the line seems to move; the looser or more spread the stain, the slower the line seems to move.

Thus MOTION and PACE OF MOTION are prime characteristics of the line.

Motion also must take a direction and therefore line provides the surest graphic to direct the eye hence the line is dominantly DIRECTIONAL.

Finally a line moving through space also demarcates space consequently, line provides DEFINITION.

Henry Moore. Pen exercise. 1970

· AREA: the conformation that results when an applied stain is spread beyond the compactness of a point or line.

· Because a stain can be concentrated or diluted, we can obtain dark or light tone values. These can give a flat graphic surface and illusory three-dimensionality or solidity.

· It is easier to develop a wide range of tonal values in a large rather then a small stain area.

Claude Lorraine. Wooded landscape 1635. Pen and brown wash

Stain: the stuff with which marks are made. The TYPE OF STAINING MEDIUM used will have a direct bearing on the shape that a mark will assume. The CHOICE OF INSTRUMENT and the KIND OF PHYSICAL ACTION required to APPLY the medium- whether pulling, pushing or dabbing, and the STRENGTH OR PRESSURE the stain is applied, all play a part in influencing the marks made.

Collier makes the point that each artist builds up a vocabulary of his or her own markings, and manipulates them physically to speak a rich visual language. He demonstrates this point using Van Gogh’s painting Boats at Saintes-Maries 1888 and compares this with Claude Lorraine’s Landscape 1635. He highlights Van Gogh’s masterful use of Point and Line in comparison to Lorraine’s skillful, dominant use of Area and Tone.

INSTRUMENTS

Collier explores the large variety of instruments that can be used to make marks from the formal instruments like brushes, pens, crayons and pencils to less formal instruments like an ordinary twig or a fingertip.

GESTURE AND CONTENT

Collier also revisits the reason that marks can express and communicate thought and feeling without speaking a word. One factor that he attributes to this fact is the kinesthetic factor involved in the act of drawing, ie: the mark made by virtue of the body moving in and out of the drawing with motions ranging from spontaneous to deliberate; applying different pressure touches from moment to moment and generally putting the image together through the gesture of drawing.

EXPRESSIVE AND CONCEPTUAL APPROACHES

Collier simplifies these two ideas in order to examine the motive behind image making and therefore the choice and use of marks.

Expressive: seeks to express states of feeling – the intensity of the mood or the particular quality of the feeling.

Conceptual: seeks to render the nature of thought – the process of intellect-in as clear and structured a way as possible.

He uses the examples of Eugene Delacroix’s Tiger and Pablo Picasso’s Bull 1946 to illustrate these ideas

Eugene Delacroix. Tiger. Pen and wash drawing.

Collier examines how one can ‘feel’ Delacroix’s vitality of touch in terms of the various marks employed. He challenges the viewer to look at the graphic markings and describes them from their perspective of their urgency, drama, menace and the predatory feelings they give to the image. He describes the pressure being applied here, relaxed there, causing pen and brush to bounce and stroke their way over the ground with a linear energy at one moment curvilinear and sensuously relaxed, yet at another angular, pointed and hesitantly anxious. He therefore explains how the drawing marks and the drawing gesture imparts both speed and stealth; the shaped areas of stain flow in sympathy with them.

He describes this as a visceral drawing in which expression prevails over concept.

Pablo Picasso. Bull 1946. Lithograph

To contrast the expressive tiger, Collier chooses Picasso’s Bull. Here he highlights that this drawing is full of humour with puns on brawn and bullish masculinity, which is delivered through a precise, geometrical treatment. He explains how this is an intellectual kind of fun and the foundation of the drawing is an idea or concept. It is a carefully thought-out shape, highly controlled and regular in drawing which shows the artist’s ability to analyse the natural form of the creature before going on to invent his own. The graphic style serves the rational intellect’s love of clarity, precision and order, for control and deliberation rule here. He describes the line as almost mechanical, resulting from uniform pressure and directional precision; areas of stain are avoided, thereby imparting a two-dimensional flatness to the image therefore limiting animation and naturalistic vitality

I found the way he describes the mark making and the motivation behind these images insightful and eye-opening.

Other artists that he uses to illustrate the differences in which marks can be made are:

Jackson Pollock:

Takao Tanabe:

Juan Gris:

I decided to include examples of Shaun Tan’s work as he is an illustrator who’s work I love and who makes use of mark making in all of his work:

Shaun Tan. Grandpa's Story. Tales of outer suburbia

Shaun Tan, Distant Rain Tales of outer suburbia

Shaun Tan: Pastels. Our Expedition: Tales from outer suburbia

Finally towards the end of the chapter, Collier gives some ideas about marks to explore, which I did in my sketchbook.

He breaks the exercises into:
a .) Line: continuous and broken; angular and curved; speed; carrying and constant weight and finally value in terms of light and dark stain

b.) Point: physical characteristics; drawing with point alone;

c.) Area and stain: physical Characteristics.

Within these exercises I tried to use a range of instruments including traditional drawing tools like a dip pen and paintbrush (wet and dry) while also including tools like my finger and a twig.

I also tried to use different stains to explore their properties including ink (waterproof Indian ink and water-based ink); Biro pen; pencil; watercolour paint.

I did not vary the type of paper and therefore found out how certain stains reacted with the drawing paper. For example the Indian ink when splattered freely on the page had a tendency to seep through to the other side of the page therefore influencing what was seen on the other side of the paper.

This exercise and reading the chapter in this book made me realize how many studies one could do on mark making alone where the act of drawing is central to motive.

Due to time constraints I had to stop but I think this will certainly become an ongoing study within my one image making.