Lots of Happy Mark-Making

In the comments on a recent drawing-related post, my friend Clive Hicks-Jenkins (who is as kind and generous as he is talented) offered some gentle and excellent advice that boiled down to this: "Have more fun! Play!" I needed to be told that, and encouraged. Anyway, Friday afternoon in the studio I got out a watercolor block of good paper; some bottled sumi ink, water, and small pots for mixing washes; a bunch of my old calligraphy tools (I used to be a professional calligrapher, long long ago); a variety of brushes - some standard watercolor brushes, some Chinese; and some stranger objects -- one of my favorite mark-making tools is a stick I whittled to a bit of a point, back in Vermont. And started to play.

The marks began to take on a bit of a landscape-like character, with some of the forms I've internized from drawing the park. And I was having a great time with the Chinese brushes. That was when this "rock" happened. I threw some salt into the wet ink on the left side and loved the result: it's unplanned, and quite free. These are the "accidents" that make art-making fun, and which propel us along. Sometimes there's just one really effective brushstroke or area of vitality in an entire drawing, but if we're paying attention, it can teach us something.

Pointy steel pens tended to catch in the rough watercolor paper, but my stick proved to be a good tool, as did certain brushes and flat-nib pens. A friend brought me the Chinese brushes directly from China, a number of years ago, and I've never really used them. It was exciting to see how different they were from my watercolor brushes, and to discover what sorts of marks I could make with them, held in different ways, and with different consistencies and amounts of ink. The marks below were made with a wide variety of tools.

Yesterday I went back to the studio in the afternoon, thinking I'd start work on a relief print from a very different drawing, a face. But when I looked at the previous day's "sampler" sheet, my fingers started itching and I got out the ink again, wondering if I could make what I had left (below) into a park-influenced painting of sorts.

Here's the result:

(click for larger view)

The floating squares were marks made with a special, stiff, square calligraphy tool that I think belonged to my mother - I didn't know what to do with them but I echoed them more faintly to the right, and now think they sort of look like prayer flags. Whatever!

You can click on the final image for a larger view. Thank you, Clive, and thanks to all the readers who've commented on these posts. I had a lot of fun -- and learned a lot in a short time. Full of ideas and enthusiasm right now.

Comments

[john]

i see Buddhist prayer flags here,not in colour,but still i am going to see them as a counterpoint to the Feral,what an ugly word,capitalism post. These flags are thought to promote wisdom and to bless the surrounding landscape.We have buddhist flags in the yard of our house.A tibetan who i barely knew,and who i knew not to be rich in the things of this world,gave me some flags as a gift.I hung them in my office behind my desk.Recently a very wise client interpreted the mantra written on them for me.She told me the flags could bless me.I told her they already had.So I see prayer flags in your post

[Beth]

Thanks, John. That's what I see too, and I definitely feel blessed.

[Vivien]

The marks seem to me to be a distillation of things you've experienced in drawing lately - trees, the park, landscapes, the allotment. Interesting dynamic work!

[Hannah Stephenson]

Playfulness and permission to be playful. Both are gifts.

[Marja-Leena]

I love these, especially the second one, for their free lines and movement and textures. The prayer flags are indeed blessings and perhaps a message of hope for peace sent out to this crazy mixed up world. (Yes, I read your last post, agreeing with you, but without words to add.)

[Uma Gowrishankar]

This is brilliant Beth. The square objects are like kites that crowd our sky - July is a windy month.

[zuleme]

I really like the squares, couldn't tell you why though. I bet that would look great in color too. I've messed around with a technique called vitreous flux, invented by a local painter. It's watercolor on a slick board that has been slightly roughed. Only one layer of paint will stay but there is a lot of salt and removing paint technique. I'm not describing it well, I'll send you a sample! It takes a loose attitude at the same time as you have to control your colors or everything will be brown.

[Natalie]

My favourite is the top image (which I guess is a detail of the bottom one?) because it concentrates the sense of playfulness, light and shade, lovely ink/paper textures, movement, and yet is quite restful. I also love the tonal differences that the ink allows.

[marly youmans]

Frolicky kite-ish laundry on a wild line

Am enjoying your experiments in going looser, Beth.

[Fire Bird]

your rock has something of the buffalo about it - or bison maybe... i feel it is ready to move...

[Beth]

hah! I like that...it does feel like a sleeping beast about to shrug...

[Cheap True Religion Jeans]

Regular readers of Everyday Sociology know that I’m the new kid on the block. And I must say I’m pretty surprised to find myself in this position. It’s not that I don’t love sociology (which I do) and it’s not that I don’t enjoy writing about it (which I also do) it’s that I could never figure out how people had the time to read blogs, much less write them. I have enough trouble juggling my job-related tasks (preparing for classes, grading papers, attending committee meetings, working on my research) with my personal tasks (walking the dog, preparing meals, cleaning the house, exercising, following current events). And I know I’m not alone.