Mark Making Circus Drawing

I really struggled with the mark making brief. I found creating images out of line and shape fairly comprehendible but I didn’t know where to start with mark making. Would I fill in shapes with marks or draw simply with marks?

Here I attempted to create a full page circus scene. I really like the composition of the image and think that it would have worked really well as a simple line drawing with a small amount of tone. However, it did’t really fit the brief. The use of mark making to create a sense of texture and tone overwhelmed the complex image. It is too busy and it is unclear hat is going on. Using texture definitely works better on more simplistic illustration to complement shape and create a sense of the artist’s hand.

 

I really liked the hand made quality that using mark making gave the work of some of my peers. I don’t think that I achieved this is my own work. I think that the edges of the cut out shapes look too hard and mechanical (the textures almost look digitally overlaid). Now that I have reflected on my own work and understand the brief better, I want to go back and do some more drawings. 

Laura Carlin is an illustrator who focuses on mark making in a lot of her images. Rather than using mechanical mark making and making the marks herself, she allows the media to take over. Here, instead of flatly filling in her shapes, she really embraces the surface of the watercolour. This helps to animate and lift the simple shapes of the people, while adding another level of visual interest to the image.