Line vs Mark Technically, a mark is any record on the page – a dot, a loop, a line, or a clockwise half circle resembling a backwards “c.” Each of your drawing materials can make a variety of marks from stippling (repeated dots) to lines. First exercise: take your charcoal stick, conte crayon or a pastel chalk and make five different marks. Try finding different edges and faces of your drawing implement. Two of the marks can be lines – a mark whose length is longer than its width. But before starting, let’s look at a few images first.

What is a line? "A line is a dot that went for a walk." - Paul Klee.

Paul Klee WAS FEHLT IHM?, 1930 What’s the Matter with Him? Stamped drawing in ink on Ingres paper on cardboard, 55.5 x 34 cm A line is defined by length; its length is always greater than its width.

Alternatives to Lines:

Vincent Van Gogh combined many kinds of lines and marks to make his drawings

More Van Gogh

Georges Seaurat

Seurat, conte crayon – all mark, very little line

But back to lines, there are many different kinds of lines Here are a few: Broken Implied Contour Gestural Curvilinear Rectilinear Heian Period, 12 th c. Japan, Scroll of Froliking Animals. Shows: Curvilinear, Gestural, Implied and Broken.

Henri Matisse, curvilinear contour line.

Picasso, drawing of a harlequim

Rectilinear lines are those that are geometric in style. Rectilinear lines are straight and clear with pointed angles. Rectilinear lines can create a harsh and energetic feeling to an artwork. Cubist work such as Picasso's Guernica employs a dominant use of rectilinear lines to express an organized sense of chaos. Studies for Guernica by Pablo Picasso.

Now, the lines we are dealing with today are called Contour Lines. A contour line can be curvilinear, rectilinear, gestural or implied, but a contour line always shows the edge of an object. A contour line can be the outside edge of our view of the object (its perimeter) or a contour line can show the edge of a plane within the object.

Contour lines are sometimes hard, with a heavy pressure, dark line. Such images have a stark, flat look.

Sometimes soft lines work better.

Or sometimes a mix of both. If you were to draw these dice you might make the hardest line at the base where the dice touch the table. The soft edges that define the round “faces” of the dice could be executed in a broken and/or softer line. Softer contour lines are also called for when you want to express an illuminated (rather than shadowed) edge.

Look at this contour drawing of a mannequin’s head. Which contour lines could be softened because the edge is soft (and shows a low contrast of light)?

Juan Gris, Portrait of Daniel Henry Kahnweiler

Juan Gris, Portrait of the poet Max Jacob

Picasso, contour line drawing of Igor Stravinsky

Egon Schiele

David Hockney, b. 1037

Types of Contour line exercises: blind (image below), kinesthetic, and continuous.

Today we will make contour line drawings of sweet potatoes and ginger. We will also try a stippled drawing of one of these foods. Then we will try contour line drawings of our own hands. Your homework (in sketchbook) two drawings (15-30 minutes on each) 1) ginger or sweet potato in a box/plate/round tin, contour lines, soft and hard, broken and implied 2)ginger or sweet potato in a box/ plate/round tin with marks that are not typical lines: scrumbling, stippling, “x’s”