The Why, Where & How of Line
Take a look at the line of that mountain range over there. If you plot that on a bar scale and connect the dots, you'll have yourself a pretty good tune. All you need is a nice line. -Robert Genn
Picture it: Seventh grade art class...you just hung up your first drawing of a stack of books using the most recent lesson on perspective. You think it looks pretty good and when it's your turn for critique, you're all set for the praise and accolades. But wait...is that noise your best friend sitting next to you..laughing and proclaiming loudly that it looks like your books are floating in space? UGH...With that critique, I swore off drawing forever and decided I'd only stick with color blobs for the rest of my life. And I pretty much did, until 20 years later, a graduate school class turned my mindset around and I discovered why mark-making (not drawing in the formal sense) is so important to the artist and why line, specifically, is so important to painting.
The Why Why do I talk about line so much in my teaching, my social media posts and in writing this blog? Why do we respond so viscerally to the work of Cy Twombly and other artists who use line so prevalently? Why should you be using more line in your work? Read on for the answers to these burning questions...
Lines lead the eye, visually and physically connecting the elements of your painting. They complete the composition by creating rhythm, balance, visual music, text, a linear ballet, if you will. Variations in width, direction, density, length and character create interest and integration of the painting surface. Lance Esplund said it best, Line is a rich metaphor for the artist. It denotes not only boundary, edge or contour, but is an agent for location, energy, and growth. It is literally movement and change - life itself.
In one of the first published books about doodling, Everybody's Pixillated, Russell Arundel wrote, (Doodles)...are the psychic blueprints of man's inner thoughts and emotions that have slipped from the deeps of memory onto paper. Line is the emotion, the essence and personality of the artist. Lines create a distinction between artist's works. For example, I may be able to paint a red or purple splotch similar to those in the Twombly paintings below. But, in a million years, I couldn't copy the gesture of his lines, scribbles and text. Simply, your lines are yours, no one else can make them the way you do. Twombly said of his lines, My line is childlike but not childish. It is very difficult to fake... to get that quality you need to project yourself into the child's line. It has to be felt. Indeed.
If I see a painting without line, there is a certain incompleteness, I feel I'm not seeing the entire message the artist wishes to convey. Certainly, there are artists who create amazing works of art without line, Rothko comes to mind...yet, even in his works, I see some line expression...certainly a confidence in his paint application. It's this kind of confidence in your marks that carries your message home for the viewer.
One thing that my workshop participants consistently want to achieve is to develop their own 'style', their own 'voice', to create a cohesive body of work that is their own. There are a number of ways to do this, but one that I feel most strongly about is to develop a mark-making practice of 5-15 minutes a day. In late 2018, I was bored one night and decided I wanted to learn Spanish, so I picked up my phone, downloaded Duolingo and I've been practicing daily since then. If I miss a day, it's incredible how much I forget! Mark-making is the same way, it establishes a connection between you and your work and your work and the viewer. This is your language, this is your communication, this is your vocabulary. You have to practice it everyday or you lose a little something in the translation from thought to painting. The same loss is felt if line is left out of the work entirely. Jean-Michel Basquiat said it simply, Every single line means something.
The Where So now that we know how important they are, where do we derive inspiration for these lines. Very simply, lines are everywhere! Most of the inspiration for my line work comes from lines I see in nature. I photograph them, sit on the ground and trace them with my finger, then I draw them, over and over again in my sketchbook. Like memorizing vocabulary words or song lyrics, over and over again, is the key-then the line becomes my own. Go take a walk with your camera to collect a few inspiration images of your own. A few of my 15 minute drawings/collages inspired by landscape are pictured in the gallery below. I'm also constantly posting my photos and drawings out on the trail on Instagram. Give me a follow to see.
The How Establish a practice. This is as simple as picking up a sketchbook and a pencil, setting a timer for 5 minutes and letting the pencil glide on the paper until the timer says stop. Use your images for inspiration and do this everyday. Try a mark-making support group to help you keep up your practice and build content into your work. Visit the Mark-Making as Practice webpage to read all about it and see when our next sessions are scheduled. If you’re ready to get started making marks now on your own, read this post for a few fun mark-making prompts.
Now that you have these marks ready to go, how do they go from sketchbook to painting and how do you translate these things into encaustic? Join me in Santa Fe for Exploring Landscape Through Encaustic & the Mark, September 22-26. Daily journaling, meditation, readings and expressive mark-making exercises along with leisurely walks exploring the outdoors in beautiful Santa Fe provide the inspiration to develop ideas for series-based work while also developing your personal artistic voice. I absolutely cannot wait to walk with you through the spiritually and visually awe inspiring landscape of Santa Fe to capture the lines and then translate them through a number of alternative methods into your encaustic paintings. Please note that this is NOT a drawing workshop...rather, it's about finding and making marks, creating your linear language and expressing yourself more fully in your work. The last time I taught this class was 2019 at the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown and it was a fabulously fun class. We played with ink, established rhythm with music, choreographed marks on paper with long bamboo 'brushes', created marks with fire, horsehair and stitch and a lot more. Check out the images below to see the wonderful line interpretations the students created. Since then I’ve added a few more fun techniques and materials for Santa Fe, including walnut ink, Suminagashi, powdered graphite/charcoal, graphite bars, horsehair, pyrography and stitch in combination with abstract encaustic painting on paper and panel. Through listening, mapping, touching, collecting and communing with nature using all of the senses, our body's connection and its direct relationship to landscape is explored and experienced. Join Us!
