Mark making with markers

The folks with the Grant County Art Council hosted a "paint-out" last Saturday at Welton Park near the Grant-Hardy border.

Not very many people participated, but those who came had a good time and worked on some scenes of the South Branch, which borders the park on its way through Petersburg Gap.

I was meeting someone, so I could not stay for the entire session. I decided that I would use my limited time to play with my Prismacolor Markers and sketch -- it would be quicker and less messy to clean up when my lunch partner arrived.

The top scene is of a stand of trees lightly kissed by the bright noon sun.

This bottom scene is mostly made up...I'm getting better at imagining and simplifying scenes, so this one deserves a small pat on the back. Several canoes went by while I was working on the tree drawing, and I thought it would be fun to play with very simple shapes and reflections in an imagined scene on the river.

The markers are a little hard to get used to. I really wanted to smoothly transition from light to dark in places, and with the markers that sort of nuance is difficult. They're best in a posterized sense..mass strong, simple shapes, and use a minimum of values.

I bought the markers so I could develop thumbnail value drawings as a precursor to painting. As usual, the markers have remained in a coffee cup on my desk, and the brushes have reigned supreme. But, this was a good opportunity to play, and I like some of the results. I really had to think about moving shapes forward and back based on values and relationships to surrounding shapes.