Well I’ve started! I started out by tackling the warm-up mark making exercise.  I used a number of different HB graphite pencils, (2B, 4B & 6B), charcoal pencils and blocks in different weights, wax crayons, pens (fine liners and fountain pen) and brushes and ink.  I taped together two sheets of A4 cartridge paper to make A3 size and marked the paper with each tool.  I annotated each mark with the tool used.

I quickly realised that I did not like using the charcoal pencils on the texture of the cartridge paper!  It set my teeth on edge however soft or hard I pressed!  But I did enjoy using the block charcoal as it went onto the paper in a much smoother fashion.  Although I have since been less impressed with the mess it makes to anything it touches – including my hands! I also enjoyed using the wax crayon and experimented by using the white wax crayon and adding black wax on top of it to create shades of grey.  I had only ever associated wax crayons with children’s drawing and colouring before and never imagined that it would produce such a lovely effect on paper.  I varied the heaviness of my hand pressure and created very different effects with the same tool.  I used blue ink (as I already had it to hand and didn’t want to spend money on black!) and different types of brushes to make marks.  I found that it didn’t matter how much or how little pressure I used with the fine liner and fountain pen – the results were the same and I didn’t produce any shading effects.

I loved the shading effects that I created with the different grades of graphite pencil!  I already enjoy handwriting using a pencil, so this wasn’t a surprise.

Although this was a very simple exercise, I was apprehensive about actually starting as I have never drawn or used a pen or pencil to do anything with except write, so I was completely out of my comfort zone.  However, I really did enjoy it and found myself ‘loosening up’ and relaxing as I did it.

I went on to the next exercise of making tools.  I looked around my home for inspiration, and decided to look at various ways of utilising fibre, of which I have plenty of lying around!  I removed dead hair from my hairbrush and clumped it together and attached it to an old toothbrush for one of my tools.  I used a few staples of alpaca fibre and a crocheted flower head – both of which I attached to an old toothbrush to provide the handle. Again I used blue ink as I have no black.

The human hair produced a very strong effect on the paper with very minimum effort when first loaded with ink, but still had an irregular edge to each mark.  As the ink diminished there was no regularity of the stroke.  I felt that this could be a good medium to use as it can be controlled quite well to produce strong designs. I also removed the ‘ball’ of hair and scrunched it between my fingers which produced a lovely shading effect on the paper.  This was after the initial ink had started to diminish.

I started with the alpaca fibre by just dipping the tips into the ink, but the staples were 9cm long with irregular ends.  This meant that I had much less control over the tool.  I ended up just stroking it across the page, which sometimes produced strokes of ink and sometimes just random marks.  It was therapeutic just stroking the paper, but only possible to do flowing type marks, more precise marking was impossible.  I cut the tips off the staples and then dipped them into the ink again; this produced splatter marks as well as a strong irregular mark.

With crocheted flower, due to the amount of ink it soaked up initially, the marks it made were significant, but became lighter with use.  I particularly enjoyed the way that one part of the flower would mark in a completely different way to the other part – even on the same stroke.

From using these unconventional, improvised tools, at the moment I prefer using the conventional tools to make marks.  This could be because I can be more confident in the outcome of what I will produce, rather than the uncertainty produced by the made tools.  However, I am hopeful that this might change as I allow my creativity to ‘flow’ and become less concerned with a specific outcome!

I then went on to the next exercise of making negative marks.  I used a graphite (6B) pencil as the background on an A3 sheet of paper.  I then applied masking fluid with a toothbrush, and then applied an ink wash over the top. I went on to use a charcoal stick to make the paper black, before using a paintbrush to apply the masking fluid. I was more able to control the paintbrush to make precise marks, which was neither better or worse than using the toothbrush. Just different.  Perhaps the toothbrush was more liberating as the outcome was less controllable? In any case, using the charcoal as a background and the blue ink wash over the masking fluid, produced a very different effect than the graphite background.  The total effect was that of an indigo colour.

I enjoyed using this technique, which was totally new to me.  I could see how this technique of resistance could be used on fabric and I was pleased with the resulting marks on the paper!