Intro Quiz: Painting techniques: Mark making

Video: Painting techniques: Mark making

﻿Here's what we're going to be learning in today's lesson. What is mark making? How to experiment with mark making and how to create an image using a variety of different mark making. So what is mark making? And how have artists used it in their paintings? We have some examples here and the first one is Robert Delaunay and you can see his Still-Life where you've got lots of different colours that aren't smooth. You can almost see the different strokes that the brush made with the paints and then Vincent Van Gogh, he's another one that's really famous for using mark making in his paintings and Edvard Munch. Now if you have a really close look, you can see here that Van Gogh used mark making to show the different tones within that sky. So he's using a dark paint here and then gradually making marks with his brush and getting gradually lighter. Over here, he's also using different greens and so when you stand back, you don't necessarily see those different marks but it's changing the colour optically. So rather than making a different green on the palette and just smoothly putting it on, by using these different greens from a distance, it looks like a completely different green to when you look up really close to it and seeing those different marks and here we've "The Scream" famous painting by Edvard Munch, he's using his marks to show expression and feeling. Van Gogh did this very much as well. So the materials you're going to need in today's lesson are acrylic paint, a paint palette or as I was using an old plate or you can find a plain white tile two A4 sized cardboard or card or thick paper, the thicker the better, a variety of different sized strips of card, some newspaper to protect your table or work surface. So if you please pause the video, go and get your materials and then come straight back. So let's begin. So I'm going to show you how to create different marks using card. So when I teach this lesson in school, I banned brushes from the students they hate it at first but then they get really creative and come up with some really amazing work. We use this a lot when we're looking at the artists Van Gogh. So let's have a look. Now here are what I'm going to be using. I've got this piece of card which you can do this if you wish, I've covered it with white acrylic paint and let it dry and then I've got all these different whips of strips of card. So like I said, no brush. So I'm going to demonstrate with the different bits of card, all the different marks that you can create. So I'm using the cool yellow and I'm using the card strips in kind of swirly roundy kind of way and as you can see when I put the blue on top, the areas where it overlaps the yellow you get some really beautiful green. So from just using those two colours, not mixing it on the palette, you can see that I've created green using the strips of card. Now here I'm using the edge of the card to get some really beautiful dabs and these are very reminiscent of the brush strokes that Van Gogh used and if you were to see this from a distance it'd look like a yellowy orange but from close up you can see how it's been made with the different tones. So here I've got slightly fatter but shorter strokes and just like in the sky, that Van Gogh's sky, you can see how putting those two different blues in you get a really nice colour there. So adding the yellow is turning it into a green and you're getting a really lovely texture there. So you're not going to create smooth imagery with this it's going to be very textured and lots of different marks. So what I'd like you to do is pause this video, start getting experimenting with all those different marks, see what you can create out of those different strips of card and then come straight back. Okay, once you've got all those different mark makings on your card, I'd like you to annotate how you made them? What colours did you use? And also what could you use these different mark making techniques for? For example, the one on the left where I used the yellow and the blue and created the green, those swirls would be really nice for our skies and any rounded forms possibly clouds, the one in the middle, it looks really great for textiles, any sort of fabric you could make that kind of marks to give that texture to show like the artists did, they show different patterns and forms and the different tonal qualities within their work through their mark making and then the one at the end, the random dabs, that would be quite nice for distant trees where you can't really see the individual leaves but you can tell that there's some kind of texture. So pause the video, start annotating, don't forget this can be put in your project to show the examiner how you've been experimenting and then we'll see you straight back. Okay, so I've chosen an image to work from so very much like Delaunay did in the example I showed you in one of the first slides, we're going to do a Still-Life. So I found this image of a bowl of fruits. It's got lovely colours in it, so I thought it would be quite fun to try those techniques. Now I'm going to have that bowl of fruit as you can see just below me so you can be doing this as I do it. I'm going to show you step by step. We're going to start off by marking out the different shapes that we can see very lightly, very loosely, and then we can get started. So I've got a warm and a cool red, a cool and a warm blue, a warm and a cool yellow. I've got black, I've got some white and then here I've got the very dark brown, it's called Burnt Umber. Okay, so here is the drawing that I created. So just some very rough shapes and I'm going to start with the background. So it's very important to start with the background so that when you start with the actual, the main subject, in this case the fruits, they sit on top of the background otherwise it makes the perspective and the depth out of sync. It makes it look like the background is in front of the bowl of fruits. So start with the background. It's a random colour that I chose 'cause obviously you can see it hasn't got blue there. I just wanted to add a pop off colour. So I put some dark blue which was the warm blue at the bottom to create this shadow and then in the top hide it's some of that white and at this I'm not actually mixing any colours on the palette. I'm mixing them straight on that painting surface and I'm now working from the furthest fruit which in this case is the bananas and I'm going to be working forwards. Put some highlights in with the white and you can see that you can already, you can get a sense of that form, the form with a banana where it's quite rounded, just by putting those marks in. So now I'm actually using the palette to mix. So with the card I'm mixing a little bit of the cool red and the warm red to get the tone of those plums and I'm putting in some white and yellow to get a little bit of highlight and now I've mixed some of purple using the blue and the red and as you can see I'm now going for the oranges. So keep looking at the photo, see where the lights are and where the darks are and then I've done the green of the apples so you can see there's a real mix there of yellow and blue and white. So I used both blues and both yellows for those, for the apples and there you have it. So you've got a really textured mark making piece and let's just go back to that bit. There you go. So you can see how those different tones light around here we've got the lighter tones that give it that more shine and we got the dark tones here which shows that it's in shadow. So we've got really nice mix there and we've got the textures of the orange where it's quite rough, the skin, brighter side. So if you could pause the video and I'd like you to get all those colours and start with the background as I did, you can choose whichever colour of background you like, you don't have to go blue and then start from the back with the bananas and then work your way forwards. The last area should be the apples. So you can also go back, keep pausing watching those sections, see how I did each of those fruits and then come straight back. Okay, so I hope you're happy with what you've created. I'm going to go through my, "What Went Well" and "Even Better Ifs". So I really do like the variety of mark making and how it gave the shapes 3D form. So each of those objects look pretty 3D there and I do like how the colours have mixed within the mark making. So it's been really nice to blend those colours in on the actual surface that I've been painting rather than on the palette. "Even Better If", I would have preferred if there was more definition in the fruits. So at the moment, it looks I mean, I quite like it but it looks quite chaotic. This looks very busy and there's lots going on there and I would like it so that you can see, maybe get the stalks of the apples in and maybe just put some more marks in just to give that Van Gogh feel that he did where it's more sort of marks rather than scraping the paints across like that. So I went ahead and I did some extra to it using some thin strips of card and as you can see, I've got more of the form of the apples, the oranges and I'd prefer the bananas. Now you can see that I used a really thin strip of card here and just did this dabbing all over. So even though I prefer this one, it was good to do the the initial colours because they formed a really good base for this painting here and then just by going over and refining each of those fruits with a narrow strip of card, it's only about that narrow and then just dabbing those colours just to get those shapes really tight. So I'm really pleased with how it's turned out. So "Independent Learning Task" for you, is I'd like you to create a painting with a variety of mark making that links to your own project. So for example, What is the theme of your project? then I'd like you to find the artists that you've either already been looking at or find an artist that's relevant that uses mark making in their work. I'd like you to choose one of your primary images or any photograph that you have taken for your project and then try and do a mark making study of it in the style of your artist. Now, this is going to hit so many marks because you're showing the examiner your understanding of the artist and their style and you're using your own primary imagery. So that's a really good way to get extra marks. Okay, so if you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak and it's now time to take the "End of Lesson Quiz". I hope you enjoyed the lesson and you remember everything that I've taught you and hopefully you get five out of five and I will see you next time.

Art

Painting techniques: Mark making

Introductory Quiz

Video

Final Quiz

Lesson Complete