Expressive Drawing – Conversations Between Line Weight

Elaine and I are settling in to our new home. Now the moving frenzy has died down I have more time for drawing and painting – I even have a studio.

I’ve returned to Expressive Drawing by Steven Aimone (see Expressive Drawing - The Drawing Process). Chapter 3 is about Line and Mark. There are some initial “Play” exercises involving the creation of samplers using different tools on different surfaces.

“Build” exercise 1 is Conversations Between Line Weight. The steps are:

• Draw a simple line drawing using a ballpoint pen
• Create 6 photocopies and stick them to the wall
• Use a charcoal pencil and different line weights to create 6 variations of the original drawing (in my case scribble)

These are the results:

I enjoyed the exercise and am becoming a big fan of standing up to work. I’ve started tracing the drawings in ink (particularly the long flowing curves) as a technique for improving the quality of my lines. The results aren’t great, but they are improving.