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.
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:
