Modern Mark Making, Revealed.

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 square pixels.

Little square dots or marks of tone or color that when combined make an image, mark making using a pointillism tecnique.

Digital mark making.

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.

Take a look at the detail for a variety of different marks used to suggest contours and shadows.

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.