Muscles and Marks: Four Variables
Make your Marks.
Does a treetop have the texture of a roof? No. Artists use mark-making to communicate this difference. In van Gogh’s drawing the artist varied the types of marks to convey the unique texture and character of trees, roadway, buildings, plantings, and chimney smoke.
Van Gogh made all the marks with a reed pen and ink. What are the differences between these marks? He varied the pressure of his pen, the tempo of his gesture, the direction, and the duration of his strokes, from dots to straight lines, from curved lines to squiggles, and from circles and S-curves to crosshatches and saw teeth. See van Gogh’s Street in Maries-de-la-Mer, 1888 in Studio Seeing on page 162.
Range of Marks.
How can you develop a range of expressive marks? It’s tricky, because the practice of placing varied marks on a surface requires a detachment from object-directed perception. It also requires self-awareness when working in 2D space – and growing muscle memory to create a varied mark-making vocabulary.
Notice how the student fearlessly drew, smeared, and re-drew the shoe several times to position and re-position the shoe’s heel. The marks run thick to thin, heavy to light, curved and straight. And the direction of the shoe on the paper indicates pictorial space. The drawing is life size, on 18 x 24” newsprint.
Curved, straight, dark, light, smeared or sharp. By actively cultivating new and different mark-making habits, artists establish a personal range of marks – a powerful toolkit for self-expression. This can be a revelatory skill to build! You can also create transition areas of light to dark using this same approach. To progress, devote six weeks to daily exercises such as those in Chapter 10 of Studio Seeing.
Avoiding cliches.
Want to avoid clichés? To do so, an artist needs to become consciously aware of their own personal kinesthetic actions and muscle-memory. Remember, the 2D space of paper or canvas is not the real world. What goes on there may look like what’s real, but that is an illusion.
All drawing and painting are abstract configurations, configurations human beings learn to interpret, understand or not, love or hate.
Clichés result from a repetition of stereotypical, predictable, and familiar marking patterns. Chapter 10 of Studio Seeing helps the artist gain self-awareness and push beyond clichéd marking patterns. That’s critical for truly original expression.
Artists can expand their personal marks by focusing on their own muscles and marking patterns by exploring pressure, tempo, duration, and direction. I discuss the four variables in detail in Studio Seeing Chapter 10 (with exercises) to guide readers in their muscle-memory and mark-making journey.
Pressure.
Look, no lines.
How do you create form and the illusion of volume? One way to do this is without lines. In the Egg drawing, the student varied the pressure to create tones using only the flat compressed charcoal stick, pressing, and lifting to create light and dark. The white of the paper is untouched, creating the illusion of a three-dimensional egg form sitting on a surface in a lighted space.
Just as in the Egg drawing, the drapery drawing in Studio Seeing Figure 8.1. is an example of variations in pressure. The artist pressed the charcoal stick harder when the form turned away and lightened the pressure when the form turned forward. The artist used the end of a charcoal stick for sharper edges.
You can practice varying the pressure with a pencil, charcoal, conté, crayon. Lift and press. If you feel comfortable with that move, try spinning the instrument in your fingers and hand as you press and lift.
Tempo
Did you know there are no lines in nature? A line is just a skinny contrast. Lines can go anywhere on your paper or canvas. Artists use drawing and painting lines to indicate contrast, all kinds of contrasts—edges, shapes, volumes, shadow, texture, details, movements, and more. Try making lines. Vary your pressure. Then vary the tempo.
As in music and dance, the tempos of various passages create different effects and feelings. Try drawing your own hand with rapid mark-making—speed can unite your drawing and seeing in a way that short-circuits heavy, belabored efforts.
If you have access to a figure model, gesture drawing is one way to practice extending your range of marks with tempo. The practice requires speed of execution. The term “Gesture” refers as much to the artist’s marks as it does to the model’s actions.
Duration
Blind contour exercises are a good way to vary the duration of your marking. The exercise invites you to extend your lines further than the edges of the objects. Practice focusing on how long you can keep your hand touching the surface, pushing the line beyond the stereotype, the familiar, the named thing or the part you are drawing. The blind contour Apple drawing by the author also appears in Studio Seeing, page 116.
Drawing exercises that ask you to vary the duration of your touch are useful to move your mark making beyond the clichéd stereotype. Beginning art students tend to make short, timid movements to avoid making mistakes. They also concentrate of the thing (the What) they are drawing without noticing the marks they are making (the Where).
Develop the ability to use longer, flowing lines or short, sharp strokes, as well as soft, delicate, and even smeared marks. Practice allowing your drawing or painting instrument to remain on the paper or canvas for longer than feels comfortable, just as you would building skill, strength, stamina, or endurance for any other physical, kinesthetic action. As a dancing coach might say to beginning dancers, “if it feels right, it is probably wrong.”
Direction.
How can an artist’s marks create an illusion of 3D space on the 2D picture plane without shading? Curvilinear marks tell the viewer’s brain that they are seeing rounded forms – a jug, a lemon, a tree trunk. The Copper Beech student drawing that appears as Figure 10.6 in Studio Seeing on page 168 is an excellent example of the use of cross-contour lines.
In this drawing, the student varied the pressure and density of the cross-contour marks, creating a sense of value and space. The heavy marks indicate shadowed volume as the form turns away from the viewer. The lighter marks in the surround indicate forms in the distance; the plain paper suggests both the light on the volume, but also, the space and air around and behind the subject. Although the student made the entire drawing with invented cross-contour marks, the texture of the tree provided evidence of how the tree grew, and by turns, this visual information was a visual cue for the artist’s cross-contours. Try drawing organic forms by observing how the form grew and then invent a set of directional marks that express what you observe.
Read more about cross contour and cross-hatching, and other directional techniques in Studio Seeing Chapter 10 as well as in Chapters 7, 8, and 9 for more about line, tone, brush, and paint.
Brush and Paint
Do you want to gain confidence with the brush and paint, and avoid just filling in the outlines, as you do with a coloring book? Then shape the paint, don’t paint the shapes.
A teacher of mine said something to the effect that John Singer Sargent was able to paint a model’s form with one stroke by first mixing the appropriate dark value, a light value. and a middle tone value of flesh hue on his palette, and then by using a large brush, gather the paint in three different locations on the end of his brush’s bristles and in one stroke position the paint on the canvas.
Practice with a brush using only black water-based paint. Grasp the brush near the end of the handle, not at the ferrule, then scoop some black paint and push the paint into different shapes and sizes on the paper. Work from observation. Paint a pot and flowers on a table, or a simple still life, or a bunch of oranges, or a few potatoes or sprouting onions. Keep some of the white paper as a figure (positive*) and other times appear as the ground (negative*).
To vary the character of the brush, press and lift, also twist your wrist and rotate your shoulder, as you press and lift. Resist using the brush to just fill-in the lines. Create shapes with the brush and shape the paint. Practice this as you paint.
* There is nothing positive or negative about a picture plane. It is democratic, everything lies on the surface. The term Figure-Ground can more accurately describe the so-called negative and positive space. The figure is what your eye sees in front and what is ground is what your eye sees behind, or underneath, even though they are physically on a flat surface. The relationship between Figure and Ground are dynamic and changing, depending on the stimulus configuration, and the viewer’s attention. See more about Figure-Ground in Studio Seeing Chapter 5. Beyond Face or Vase.
Image by Julie Langsam, student work.
Deliberate Practice.
It’s not easy building muscle-memory, learning to move one’s fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, and body in 360-degree fashion to respond to the flat surface of pictorial space. Practice it – just as you would in learning to improve a tennis serve. The exercises in Studio Seeing will actively develop your muscle-memory and skill in moving your body to good effect. Practice deliberately to continually improve and get better. Let go of fear, and trust in the process to take you to the next step.
If you want to move into painting, practice painting any subject matter. Work on 18 x 24” paper, or mat board. Make a series of 10 paintings as discussed in the Bush and Paint Postscript using only black paint. Then make a series of 10 paintings using black, white and 1 bright color. Then make a series of paintings of 10 paintings using black, white and 2 bright colors. Always retain the white of the paper in some areas. Select three long handled, painting brushes of different sizes, small, medium, and large. After making 30 paintings follow your instincts about where to go next. Pick one approach and expand your palette. You may want to work with the three primaries. Keep it simple. (See the Postscripts, Show Me Ten, Make Ten More, and More About Ten)
Practice holding the brush with the handle, not at the ferrule, not like a familiar pen or pencil. There will be plenty of time in the future to develop details and finish. This stage of learning is roughing it in, making mistakes, discovery, and muscle-memory building. Don’t try to make anything perfect. Enjoy the process, the action, the curiosity, and expression. The art part will come.
Review.
How fully have you explored pressure, tempo, duration, and direction? Look back over drawings and brushstrokes you’ve made in the past. Consider the range of expressive marks. Note where you’d like to improve and expand. Then do the exercises in Studio Seeing Chapter 10 to create a new set of practice drawings and/or brushstrokes. Push yourself beyond your comfort zone towards confidence and personal expression. Long live Painting and Drawing.
NOTE: Artist-teachers may adopt this post into a syllabus for an introductory drawing/painting class, using each post as the content for a 6-hour work period and reserving a 6-hour mid-term review and a 6-hour final review. The Outlier post introduces a conversation about seeing. Studio Seeing has more to share about this subject.