The mark lesson

When you draw you can use a variety of marks the most popular types are lines, shading or dots.

In the upcoming lessons we will discuss the use of marks in more detail as different marks create different textures but for now let’s just focus on the main three.

Dots this form of drawing is often referred to as pointillism where you make a number of dots on the paper to build up your drawing.

The smudge is a technique where you use a very soft pencil 3b to 6b and you smudge the graphite with a cotton wool bus or tissue to give you a smooth shade of grey over the drawing.

Line is self-explanatory you would use lines to draw and shade your drawing. I use mainly line in all of my drawings but occasionally I will smudge a background or object to give it a smooth look

I very rarely use dots in any of my drawings.

A few tips on the use of line make sure that your lines are all in the same direction and be sure to produce clean line work if your line has a loop in the end or the lines are skew your drawing will have a chaotic look to it remember that the eye and brain does not like confusion and every mark that you make on the paper is sending a signal back to the viewer’s brain there is an emotional attachment to the mark. 

I have supplied you with an example of good and bad lines so that you get an idea of what I am talking about lines are not only used to draw and shade u with some very famous artists have only used smile lines in their work and these lines not matter how few they are manage to convey great emotion about the drawing.

I cannot emphasize how important it is to be sensitive in your use of line 

Try and create some practice drawings only using line and get the basic quality of your line work to be clean and consistent.

Next we are going to try and create as many emotions as we can only using a single line then we will be looking at other line techniques such as crosshatching and squiggles but first we need to practice line work.

Have a look at the drawings by Picasso and van Gogh to see what I am talking about Van Gochs lines are simple and straight clean Picasso understands the emotion in a simple line as can be seen by the horse drawing.