Mark making in an Expressive Way - Exercise 1

Exercise 1 - I was asked to attempt to make marks using pencil that are expressive of words such as happy, sad, slow or fast.  Some examples of my attempts at this are shown above.

Exercise 2 - Levels of tone using pencil.

Exercise 3 - This time any media could be used to make marks that were expressive of the words.

I enjoyed these exercises and found them very thought provoking.  I found that on occasion I made a mark because I believed it expressed the word only to change my mind after it was done and feel that it looked like one of the other words.  I found it helpful to try to feel the word as I worked, I think this worked particularly well for angry and happy.  As illness had forced me to take a long break and return to these exercises I did some more mark-making to ease myself back in to the course and  was surprised at the amount of time that could be spent on these drawings.

I have done short exercises similar to this before at the start of work-shops, but these would only be for ten minutes or so.  I think spending more time working in this way forced me to really think and engage with what I was doing which I think was beneficial to me.

Although I am quite happy with the work produced in this section I would like to see if I could push myself further using a wider range of media and also being more free in my work.  I feel that I work in a too neat and organised way and would like to be able to explore more fully my options.  It was interesting to note that some of the marks looked like leaves or pebbles and I could see that they could be used to describe textures in drawings.

I did find it quite challenging to make marks to express words and found quite often that I felt that I wasn't really making marks but patterns.

Working in pencil felt the most comfortable to me as I felt that I had at least some control over the marks that it created.  I wonder if this goes back to me being to 'tight' and not free enough?  I think I would benefit from trying to use media that will force me to leave this particular comfort zone.

When I have an idea for a piece that I would like to create I usually know what I want it to look like and I make it without any real effort being put into the design process.  One of the reasons that I wanted to do this course was so that I could explore the 'process' of design in order that I can make changes and ensure that I explore all the options before I make something.  I can see how using marks like these would help in the first stage of design to explore the various aspects of the object from which the inspiration is taken.