Study/Exercise [Study 7]
In one medium or another, wet or dry, marks are the beginning of all pictorial expression for child and adult. Concepts (and whatever else) must achieve the quality of some kind of image-language. Lines as optical guides in space, coordinating elements, definers of form and space, and signifier of idea and feeling, tend to assume the principal role.
We'll want as many tools or implements as possible for making marks--wide and narrow, wet and dry, firm and blurred, rough and delicate. We'll also want various kinds of paper--thick and thin, coarse and smooth, resistant and soft, "art" papers and ordinary papers. The difference between a line and a stain or a smear (all of which are kinds of marks) may depend on these qualities alone, and on whether the paper is used wet or dry.
We could try, in a number of "experiments," to explore two things at once: the physical and the esthetic potentials of our tools and materials as well as our innate powers of presentation, or making signs and images where previously there was nothing.
A good versatile brush (or brushes of different types and sizes) and black or colored inks or diluted paints (gouache or acrylics or regular watercolors) would serve for making wet marks, and various types of pencils, graphite, Conté or charcoal sticks, pastels, and crayons for making dry marks. Or why not wet and dry, as in the technique called wax resist: a drawing made first with a white or a light-colored wax crayon and then by a darker wash of a thinned-out water paint or ink? A simple design might serve as starter or primer, if need be. Variation and improvisation would follow. [Consider stamping with edges . . . . patterns & pressures] [Harlan, Calvin. Vision & Invention, An Introduction to Art Fundamentals. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986.]
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