Mark making - two afternoons at Morley

"Mark making for ceramics" was the title of the course. Tutor Jo asked us to follow her instructions about using the materials and the book of papers that she'd supplied. I'm always glad when the world of infinite possibilities gets limited somehow, whether by materials or subject matter or instructions.

First we used hard and soft pencils, and graphite and eraser, to draw lines across the pages. Simple and satisfying, right up my (travel-lines) street, in fact.

Noticing the feel, and the look, and what happens at the edge of the page...

White wax crayon and scratching and ink - been there, done that, but every time is different depending on what's gone before and what the purpose of doing it might be...

Scratching harder through wax into card - now we're getting somewhere...

 Landscapes emerge ...

 ...and all sorts of things happen when a tiny dot of ink is added to a big drop of water -

 Monoprinting - again, the type of mark that comes from different pencils -

 and from other items, surfaces and sticks for instance -

 or even by rolling a hexagonal pencil! -

Jo had also prepared some plaster blocks for carving into; these could be developed as stamps for clay -

 Using windows to find interesting areas - these are about 5cm square -

The eraser-carving is based on favourite marks -

The trees aren't abstract or simple but I have this thing about the way tree branches spread out, or not, and have never explored that idea.

The erasers turned out to be great for printing in grids.

In the second session I glued down some squares cut from the marks made last week, and we made 3d cylinders which gave an entirely different perspective to the marks/lines -

 Then we used a variety of scraps and put them between layers of acetate into slide holders. These are tiny pieces and it was a bit fiddly ...

 ... but when projected on the wall, what great effects!

cellophane and string

colour overlap

thin folded strips

scratching on the acetate