Modern mark making, revealed techniques.

Letters are marks that we have given meaning to, which then enable us to convey meaning through the combinations of written marks.

All drawing and painting consists of marks being made on a flat surface area, on their own or in clusters, these marks form a representation or illusion of being something else.

There are two distinct forms of mark making that are very different, they are tonal modeling and hatching, although there is one other called pointillist which is generally a hatching technique using dots or as shown below in the digital images can be created with square pixels.

This type of drawing or painting is also another technique used to create images and it is good for developing your drawings skills, as it enables you to slowly build up your images, giving you lots of time to focus on small refined details, as well as the overall construction of any subject you might be drawing.

Below you will find a video of a drawing created with paint, it is the culmination of thousands of tiny decisions, about every brush stroke and every mark, with some of them the result of happy accidents. This painting took me a life time to paint and you can tell I have been practicing.

It doesn't matter how easy it looks that only comes with practice.

Take a look at the images below to see some examples of the detail that can be achieved with pointillist drawings, notice how some lighter tonal areas are only suggested with a few very small dots. White or very reflective subjects work very well with a pointillist drawing style and need a lot less work because of the often large white areas created by the light being reflected from the surface.

The video below shows an example of marks that can be made with a digital pen being drawn onto a graphics tablet as another example of a more modern day tool used in drawing. Take a look at the detail for a variety of different marks used to suggest contours and shadows. Also remember that digital images when viewed very closely are often made up of pixels, which as we have described earlier, are another form of pointillism.

The image below was drawn with a traditional graphite pencil, the preferred choice of most people because of its simplicity, ease of use, and wide variety of marks it can create at varying strengths of tonal density.   Using a variation of different types of marks, some called hatching, others called tonal modelling.

Marks that are made using tonal modeling techniques are areas of different tones or colors that blend and fade into each other with no hard or definite edges like clouds in the sky have no hard edges to them.

Clouds in the sky are a good example of where tonal modeling would be used to represent something from life but another area would be skin or flesh tones because they usually display soft marks and shadows to create definition.

These examples are most often used as representation of these subjects in this way but not always, they can and are represented with hatching techniques to great effect also.

Hatching techniques are usually clusters of many similar marks that are like dashes or short and long lines that can be overlaid on each other or not creating harder or lighter tones, drawing grass would lend it’s self well to the hatching technique.

Hatching is the most often used technique in drawing and painting because it not only easily represents many natural textures it is also a more natural use of the tools used to draw or paint like pencils or brushes. Works produced using this technique can not only be interesting because of the subject matter but also the marks themselves can be interesting in detail.

Below is the hatching technique and shows short strokes going in an outward direction from the center but all in one direction using a graphite pencil.

Below is the cross hatching technique very similar to the above example but this time the strokes are going in different directions and crossing each other hence the name cross-hatching.

Although the example below is still a type of cross hatching it is not organised and uniform like the example above, this is an example of how hatching marks can be used to depict more specific elements like this. It could easily be a representation of short grass with some longer grasses dotted here and there.

Finally tonal modeling where the line is smudged from the center to create a graduated tonal effect going from strong tone to almost no tone and nothing.

Below is a quick drawing made with a roller ball pen (Bic biro) it gives a further example of hatching and cross-hatching to create a facial image? There is no way of using a tonal modeling technique when using an ink pen because ink does not lend it's self to smudging or blending so this tends to be a useful tool for developing creative mark making.

Below you can watch a video of a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 being drawn with maker pens this will give you a peek at mark making on a grand scale where big bold marks are used to emphasize the contours and curves of the car body. You can see it come to life like a jigsaw puzzle made up of marks made with a marker pen, you can also follow the link to get a greater understanding of how it was drawn with still images and descriptions.

Follow this link to see more about how it was drawn Drawing cars, Mustang Shelby GT500 with marker pens and pencil.

Below is a painting using Gouache like you would watercolor with wet into wet techniques, pastel pencil has been used in this piece mostly to soften the hard edges left by the paint in the fleshy areas of the main subject. There is a great deal of variation in different types of mark making and tonal modeling, it is an example of drawing styles being used with paints.

Finally below are some other examples of marks with symbolic representation.

Mark making is everything and here's why.

I have drawn the same images multiple times, they all look great, lol, but.

Some look better than others because of the marks.

When doing quick sketches in your sketch books, you make many of these marks quickly without thinking. Especially if you like to push yourself with time challenges. Like, life drawing, drawing something from real life, like a figure but only giving yourself 5 minuets to do it.

In these situations you tend to create marks, that are worth looking at, these are the marks that make your drawings yours. If you think about it, these types of marks, hatching, cross hatching, pointillism and modelling, are naturally, the only marks you can make with a drawing tool.

Drawing tools are used in this way, for that reason, so even when you are in a rush and not thinking about what you are doing as much, you will most likely, make all of these types of marks anyway.

When I have shown other people these images that I have drawn, more than once and asked them if one stands out, more than the others, they have often replied with a yes. When asked why, they more often than not, say it just looks better. It just looks better is just not good enough because I want to know why. When I have had the chance, to find out off some of them, it is always because the marks look better in one, rather than the others.

By taking notice of the marks you make, why you make them, how you make them, you are focusing your skills and developing your drawing technique, through experimentation and observation, action and reflection.

Action and reflection is the bases for most everything we do, it is the learning process, just in case you didn't know.

Mark making is what makes your drawing into a drawing.