Assignment one: Markmaking and tone

The first exercise in this assignment is markmaking, i first heard of markmaking when i began to study art at A-level. At first i wasn't sure what i was meant to be doing exactly, it was never fully explained and everyone else in the class seemed to know what they were doing. Looking back of course i find it funny that i felt so lost as markmaking was simply making marks.

While back then i really didn't enjoy markmaking at all i have found that doing the exercise with the OCA course was actually very enjoyable. I like the freedom it brings when you are not concentrating on creating any particular picture but are just experimenting with different materials and mediums to see how many different marks can be made and in how many different ways.

Using a pen and ink to doodle ended up producing a sort of landscape drawing although i was not consciously planning on drawing anything in particular. The two ink sketches mounted on purple paper were created by applying ink on some paper then blowing through a straw over it, the second drawing also had some ink applied with a small piece of card, it also reminded me on a landscape drawing - the card producing mountains, hills and some grass coming up and the inkand straw making what looks like branches of tress coming across.

The next part of this exercise was to continue doodling but to allow a subject to influence the marks that were being made without trying particularly hard to produce any clear image.

The first picture was done in oil pastel and i used flowers as my subject, the main focous became an opening bud of a flower and the background became the grass surrounding it. The second picture was done using a cotton bud to apply ink, and i used water as my subject. It started out as being something like droplets of water falling down the page but when i finished i thought it also looked like unopened buds of a plant.