Art teachers often go banging on about “mark-making”. I remember one occasion on which I was required just to take a large sheet of paper and make as many different kinds of marks on it as I could. Frankly, I didn’t get much out of it in the long run. I asked myself what I would then do with the results of that experience? The answer was, “Not a lot, really.”
Last night at the life-drawing session I attend each week I had a new insight into this issue. The instructor seems to make a point of setting us an entirely new task each week. We can be required to draw/paint with almost any substance, on any surface you could name. This week’s exercise was very interesting. We were given sheets of paper primed with gesso. Then we were asked to draw the model using oil pastels, but to blend the colour, thin it, and move it about using pieces of cloth dipped in linseed oil. It was a fascinating exercise.
The key point to bear in mind is that this task was being undertaken against the clock. We were given a very limited amount of time in which to make each drawing …. perhaps three minutes. The consequence of this is that we concentrated entirely on observing the model, and what the hand got up to was a secondary consideration. The result in this situation was that we didn’t pay any attention at all to “mark-making”, but only to looking. Even so: given the unfamiliar nature of the medium in which we were working, in the nature of the case all kinds of entirely surprising marks appeared, conveying a tremendous variety of effects. In other words, by not attending at all to “mark-making” the result was the making of a far greater diversity of marks, and a more interesting range of them. It was a far more enjoyable (and effective) exercise that the earlier task to which I referred above.