Mark Making Experiments

Igor Adameyko, Gerd Günther, Wim van Egmond, Benedikt Pleyer

Last week, in an email from the New York Times, I discovered this gif of microscopic life.  You can read the article here: Videos of Microscopic Life

I'm getting ready for the start of my Pencil Drawing Workshop at the Community College of Beaver County, and we'll be talking about mark making.  I find images like these spark new ideas for me.  After watching this gif, I quickly filled a page in my sketchbook.

Practicing making different marks is a good way to keep your hand in drawing practice, to exercise your imagination, and to generate new ways to express texture & shading.  Different types of marks make your art more interesting.

Look at the way that varied marks create texture and vitality in this drawing by Vincent Van Gogh.

Wow! Van Gogh's landscape fairly vibrates with life!

Though Van Gogh used a lot of straight lines and cross-hatching, look at how vibrant his Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin (1888) is.

Let's try our own mark making, inspired by the video of microscopic creatures.  I hope you'll join me and sketch your own version of this!

I started by holding my pencil -- a 7B -- at the end to loosen up my lines.  Try it!

I loved this little character, and made lots of loopy lines to create a second one.

After blowing out a candle, I noticed the way the smoke rose up, wobbly and curly.  It inspired the swoopy lines at the bottom of the page.  I smudged the soft pencil marks to make them more smoky.

For more control and different marks, I hold the pencil closer to the tip.

But I'd never get the long, flowing lines of these branching marks by holding the pencil that tightly.

Next step -- now try a page of marks that imitate Vincent Van Gogh's.

For a touch more inspiration, here's a link to a wonderful YouTube video by Ed Lax of a simple mark making exercise: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZVim6ECWss

Happy Creating!

Watercolor Sketches on a Lake

Over the weekend, my husband and I rented a pontoon boat at the Raccoon Creek State Park Boat Rental.  The weather was gorgeous and sunny.  

As we motored slowly around the lake, I made slapdash sketches of the scenery.  Above is the boat rental seen from the water, with colorful kayaks stacked up along the shore.

The sunlight and cloud shadows created beautiful effects on the trees and forests surrounding the lake.  The distant hillside was in a cloud shadow, while sunlight shot through the near trees on the left.  Days when the lighting is dramatic like this, I love to create art that zooms in on these high contrast areas.  

In artworks, areas of contrast attract the viewer's eye and create visual interest.  You can capture boldly contrasting values and colors to create a more dramatic composition.  

For instance, greens and yellows dominate this painting of the boat rental.  The red & blue-violet kayaks along the shore catch the eye because they contrast with the colors around them.

When I started painting these two scenes, my only goal was to play with my paints for the joy of it. I simply was present in the moment, exploring with my brush.

Trusting the process and going out to sketch, you make discoveries, try experiments, and find new ideas to explore.

As messy as these sketches are, I love them.  They represent a snapshot of the afternoon -- an escape to the lake with David on a gorgeous afternoon.

 Sketching in this way can foil the inner critic's voice -- you know, that voice within us that demands we make masterpieces.  

Our job in sketching is simply to "take notes" on the scene before us.  We are focusing on ways to represent what we find fascinating in the world.  We are not bound by reality.   As artists, we are not cameras!  We can omit parts of the scene, change colors, remove trees, or whatever we want!

Remember: When you are sketching, your job is to explore what you find fascinating.  If you do that, you have succeeded, no matter what your sketchbook looks like to anyone else.  

I hope you'll take lots of opportunities to make sketches this autumn!

Happy Creating!

Artist's Date to a Cyanotype Show

David and I attended the opening of the show "The Light Divides and the Story Multiplies" in Pittsburgh last Saturday night, and I came away with a wonderful sense of inspiration and fresh possibilities.  

Each of the 6 artists used cyanotypes -- the same system that makes sun prints -- to create their art.  (You can read my post about making basic sun prints here.)

Dan Hendrickson, photographer, artist and curator of the show, printed a digital photo using cyanotype and added layers of watercolor to create Archaeology of Venice, 2024, above.  I love the dreamy effect of adding the watercolor and gouache to the print.

The beauty of attending the opening of a show is that you often get to meet the artists, learn how they made their art, and what inspired them.  We got to speak with Christine Lorenz about her use of dried wild strawberry leaves to tone her cyanotypes.  I was fascinated to learn new uses for the plants I love.

One artist I didn't meet, but whose work inspired me was Michele Randall.  Randall took ocean waves as her subject, using photos and the ocean waves themselves to create her cyanotypes.  

Randall created Flotsam and jetsam, 2024 above, and the work below 

I love the way she added gold and white inks to her prints.  In her artist's statement, Randall notes, "I am interested in drawing attention to the sublime beauty and fragility of the ocean against the backdrop of environmental threats.  I want to invite the viewer into a moment of contemplation and impart the nostalgia of an unblemished world."

Cathleen Richards, an artist and boutique travel agency owner, melded her love of travel to Jordan with cyanotype printing in her artwork Worn by Time, 2026, above.  

Richards printed digital photographs of the ancient city of Petra, and a historic tile mosaic floor onto a linen blouse, then added embroidery in the traditional style of the region, imbuing the garment with her cherished memories, weaving deeper connections into a simple shirt.

I hope you make the time to visit The Light Divides and the Story Multiplies before it closes October 30, 2026.  For more information about the show, visit The Associated Artists of Pittsburgh website here: https://www.aapgh.org/

Experiencing this art opening sparked fresh ideas for me about using photographs to make cyanotypes, and adding layers to prints.  I felt so excited about new art potential that I woke up at 4:30 am unable to sleep any longer!

I decided to use this photo of the morning light glancing over a meadow.  I love the contrast, the long lines of light & shadow, and the textures of the wild plants catching the sunshine.

I needed a black-&-white negative to create my cyanotype.  Luckily, Jacquard, the company that sells cyanotype supplies, has a free & easy-to-use photo editor here:  

https://www.jacquardcyanotype.com/

I created the negative above, printed it on a transparency specifically made for my printer, and used it to create the sun print below.  Note: it's important to use a transparency made for your type of printer.  The wrong material can melt on the drum and ruin your printer.

The weather was overcast, and I set a timer for 15 minutes, but I overexposed the print so it looked more like nighttime & moonlight than morning sun.

Inspired by Michele Randall's ocean prints, I added acrylic ink marks to my dry print.  I like the result -- like lightning bugs flashing in the dusk.

I exposed a second print, above, for 5 minutes so it looked like daylight. When it was dry, I added watercolor washes as Dan Hendrickson had.  I love the effect!

These are test prints, and I plan to make more photographic prints the next time the sun comes out.  I had some difficulty with a warped drawing board that I used under the paper, negative and top glass. It's important to have the negative pressed right against the paper to make a clear contact print, otherwise the image goes fuzzy.  I have found a level board to hold the paper flat against the top piece of glass.

My mind percolates over loads of different photos and images that would work well for this project.  All from attending one art opening.  I can see why Julia Cameron recommends that artists take themselves out on "Artist Dates" routinely.  

What sort of art date would you like to take yourself on? Make a list!

Wishing you a deep well of inspiration to fuel your creativity.