A Sample Lesson & Prompts for Mark-Making as Practice Class

I have been including mark-making in all of my workshops and courses for 22 years, no matter the subject matter of the course itself. Many of my workshop attendees know that I emphasize the importance of a daily mark-making practice to grow as an artist. Regardless of your artistic discipline or medium, spending 5-15 minutes each day drawing and making marks helps ignite your creativity. To illustrate this point, I often use the analogy of exercise. Before you go out for a run or any exercise, you must warm up to avoid muscle strains and injuries. Similarly, when you enter your studio, not warming up results in wasted time organizing and cleaning, staring at the walls trying to force inspiration, or even avoiding the studio altogether out of fear or uncertainty. How many of us do that? I’m thinking there are lot of nodding heads right now.

Take the exercise analogy a bit further-when you continue to exercise on a regular basis, you become stronger, faster, healthier and it becomes a practice in your life that you must do to feel complete. The same thing happens with mark-making…When you practice moving those parts of your body and brain required to make a drawing, everything else in your art making process flows much more smoothly. The more marks you make and the more frequently you make them, they become indelibly written on your brain, your movements in the studio become more practiced and you will approach the work with confidence and knowing.

I’m so excited to offer Mark-Making as Practice for a third time beginning January, 2025. For this third iteration, I’ve added a few exciting changes, but the weekly sessions will remain the same. The main reason for this class is to maintain accountability to yourself as an artist, so the sessions remain consistent and their structure. This is about showing up. This is about fine-tuning your creative muscle, experimenting with ideas and doing this with a fun group that you know will be there at the end of the day for support, feedback or to just be there to make marks with you.

If you’re curious about what the Mark-Making Sessions are like, below is a sample lesson and prompts from one of our recent sessions this Fall. If you’re curious about the class and the exciting new changes happening in January, visit Mark-Making as Practice to find out more and join us!

To read more about my mark-making philosophy and/or to make marks to some more prompts, visit this Art Bite Blog post.

Session Content: Body Awareness

• When I first discovered Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraints (click PATH to see each Restraint, Action and Drawings) and later a number of other performance artists who incorporate mark-making, I became increasingly aware of my body and how comfort, positioning and mindset relate to my own practice.

• It has been said that Joan Miro used to regularly practice sleep deprivation and created some of his most imaginative drawings when in this state.

• Physiologically speaking, when the body is uncomfortable for controlled, short periods of time daily, it sharpens our minds, intellect and physical ability.

• In our first session, I discuss a bit about Restriction and why I actually find it liberating. To restrain oneself in some way while creating marks can have a huge benefit simply because it encourages innovation, a bit of a struggle in both the physical and intellectual, expanding your mark-making abilities in ways that may surprise you.

• Another reason why restrictions are so important is that they aid in the elimination of control. It’s been proven that when one of our five senses is impeded, the other four senses become stronger and the same works for art-making. Elimination of one or more aspects of control during the art-making process creates an additional opportunity for us to innovate. We will touch on control elimination throughout the remainder of the course.

• During this session we will explore some ways in which we can restrain our mark-making and body. No worries, we won’t be jumping off of trampolines like Matthew Barney, things will be a lot more tame! Throughout the session, take note of your comfort level and breathing It may be helpful to make notes of these things in your sketchbook as you draw or after each drawing.

• Supplies: Choose 1-3 drawing implements from your collection with your eyes closed. I will also ask that you think of a way to make yourself uncomfortable for one of the prompts. Think of how you might do this in advance of this session.

Session Prompts

Throughout the session, make note of your body position-seated, standing, on the floor. Is your paper, vertical or horizontal? Are your legs crossed, straight, curled under you, yoga position? Are you cold, hot, tired, hungry, thirsty, feeling ill in any way, in any type of discomfort? What happens if you change any one of these things during the session?

1. Hold your implement loosely from the top with your elbow up and respond to the same line description from the list above that you chose in the last session. Compare the differences in the two drawings later and make some notes as to what you observe.
   ••••Rectangular and inharmonious

2. Draw the same line description with your eyes closed and with your non-dominant hand. 

3. Make yourself uncomfortable in a way that won’t hurt you or others around you. Jot down on your paper how you did this. Draw this line description from last week and note the differences in last week’s drawing compared to this one.
   •••• Graceful but somehow discordant