Assignment 2: Flowing and Playing

Brief

This assignment will introduce you to thinking without making assumptions about the importance or value of outcomes or ‘finishing’ work. This is an important part of the creative process, where placing restrictions on what you do or how you work can sometimes stop you from responding as openly as possible. The aim is to test how you can work spontaneously with little or no forethought, and to allow the elements of image-making like form, shape and line to emerge from unconscious experimentation.

• Take a blank piece of paper, ideally A3 or larger size, and an ordinary HB or 2B pencil and begin to make marks in the top left-hand corner of the paper. 

• At first make small, short marks, but as you begin to work across the paper start to make them larger, stronger and more varied. 

• Continue to work across the paper and begin to fill it with these gestural marks. Vary the length, density and shape of the marks as much as possible as you draw across the sheet of paper. Perhaps small ‘zones’ of the paper will consist of short, vertical marks, while another area might be formed of curling doodles or small circles. Fill the whole sheet of paper with marks, lines, and shapes, although you may need to sharpen the pencil as you go. 

• It might take some time, maybe a few hours or even a day or two, to completely fill the paper. Don’t try to fill the sheet of paper in one go, you can take breaks and return to the paper over a period of time. 

The intention of this exercise is to reach the point where you are not thinking about the next mark, but simply enjoy letting the pencil and the marks you have made guide you along with no conscious effort.

• When you have finished, and the sheet of paper is filled with detail and variation, take two ‘L’ shaped pieces of card and frame five sections of the paper, about 12-15cm square. Think about the variation of marks, density and visual content of each of the five selected squares. 

• Take photographs of them and give them one-word titles that relate to the emotional or sensational affect you think they have. 

Upload images of both the whole drawing and your selected five images, and reflect on the process on your learning log.

The work

Variations (and title)

Life

Frustration

Uncontrolled

Mayhem

Turbulance

Evaluation

This assignment was really interesting to do, I feel like when I get artist block I could do this exercise to get me out of it. It was a good way of just feeling the pencil flow and make marks on the A3 piece of paper. For this assignment I took a A3 piece of paper and started in the corner with small precise marks and then let my pencil make the marks on the rest of the paper, doing that until the paper is completely full.

It's not something I think I would make art with personally, I'm not very good with abstract art. This assignment reminds me of the artist, Keith Haring, with having unusual marks to make up a painting. The advantages of this assignment is I was able to keep loose on the paper and without judgement just drawing/doodling away on the paper; I spent the day without realising that I was contently filling up the paper. The drawbacks of this assignment is that I was unable to pick suitable names for the pieces since I'm not really drawn to abstract art.

Keith Haring was a well-known artist from the states known for his dynamic use of mark-making and vibrant colours, his work is notable in the abstract art community for his famous iconography of bold marks and interesting narrative imagery in most of his works. Most famously, before he died, he created a piece called 'The Unfinished Painting', where it shows his style only taking up a corner of the paper.; this was due to an illness that would later take his life, a reflection of that in his final painting.

The Unfinished Painting - Keith Haring (1989).