The Art of Drawing

975 Words2 Pages

The simplistic art of contemporary drawing has always been concerned with making marks. Different artist exploit lines to make marks, which come together to express or create a feeling the particular artist is communicating. Drawing or making marks has been around longer than any other art form as cavemen where the first to discover the art. Since this time artist have been able to manipulate line and colour using not only pencil or graphite, but using charcoal, ink, water colour pencils and micro pens, creating a mixed media artwork classified as contemporary drawing art. The artists Keith Barley, Caitlin Hackett and Kiel Johnson all have very unique styles of drawing and the language of these artists have been expressed through the heaviness, tightness and looseness of their emotive contemporary drawing. Even though there are many different media’s for artworks today, most artworks start from a simple pencil drawing that has been later developed and expressed through different media which has categorized drawing as the foundation of artwork of the 21st Century artist.

Keith Barley’s contemporary drawing artwork may indeed be concerned with making marks as he uses very dark, robust and definite lines. Barley uses layers in his drawing which he says expresses “the way in which the other perceives and through that, maybe, personal meaning is attached.....or not.” Artworks from his contemporary drawing series have been inspired from “personal as well as spontaneous circumstances of the unexpected and the unseen” which really unrestricts his drawing to always push barriers into the unknown image. Barley uses charcoal and graphite, erasers, sandpaper, scalpel, dremmel, water, white spirit and fixative all to distress his works to g...

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...rcoal and graphite layered, line drawings, to Hackett’s fine lined micro and ballpoint pens, colour and water coloured pencil mutated animal drawings, to Johnson’s simplistic yet effective graphite and ink cartoonistic drawings. Drawing is concerned with making marks but within contemporary art, it is the type of drawing media, heaviness and lightness, looseness and tightness of these marks that defines what the drawing makes us feel when these marks come together.

Works Cited

http://caitlinhackett.carbonmade.com/projects/3016488#6

http://www.keithbarley.co.uk/page3.htm

http://www.kieljohnson.com/kieljohnson.com/awesomist.html

http://caitlinhackett.carbonmade.com/about

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/33095/kiel-johnson-in-los-angeles/

http://www.fecalface.com/SF/index.php/features-mainmenu-102/studio-visits-mainmenu-121/2200-kiel-johnson-studio-visit

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