Understanding How Marks Create Mood

Posted: Mar 16, 2011 |

You can create mood in your drawing by thinking about what you want to communicate in your drawing and making marks that convey that feeling. Ultimately, the marks you make in your pastels form a mood (sensation conveyed to the viewer) or expression. A pastel drawing that looks very expressive appears to have an emotional quality to the work. For example, Van Gogh used linear brush strokes in the sky in "Starry Night" to convey the spectacular starlight he found in the sky, which belied the tranquility an evening scene might normally convey.

No one hesitates to use the word masculine to describe a set of bold, angular lines or the word feminine to describe a set of fine, delicate lines. Where does that come from? They're just lines on a piece of paper! The answer is that humans use their knowledge of the world to describe and make sense of everything they see, including a pastel drawing. The idea of an observer interpreting a set of lines as masculine or feminine is directly related to how his perceptions of those characteristics developed through observation or even social conditioning.

Because everyone has different life and cultural experiences, people read what they see differently. Therefore, an artist may intend to convey one message, but viewers may interpret it in many different ways depending on their experiences, which is absolutely okay. Artwork that touches many people, however, may have tuned in on an experience everyone has shared, which may explain why Mary Cassatt's scenes of mothers and children continue to strike a note with people today.

In this exercise, you push yourself to experiment with many different kinds of lines and then explore what kinds of moods and emotions those lines trigger for you and for others.

1. Choose one of your pastel pencils. A dark pencil works best because it has the most potential for variation of value. Use the same pencil throughout, because color can also affect the mood of a drawing; you want the only variable in this experiment to be the line.

2. In your sketchbook, draw a series of lines to create as wide a variety of lines as possible. Make as many different kinds of lines as you can — at least 20 separate lines trying something different with each one. Use heavy and light pressure, a sharpened pencil and a dull pencil, and so on. Make scribbled lines, looped lines, angular lines, delicate lines, lines that start and stop abruptly, and so forth. You're not trying to evoke a certain mood at this point; you just want to get a wide array of lines on the paper. Space them in rows or a grid. Leave room beneath each for a short list of descriptive words.

3. After you have exhausted all of your possibilities for lines, examine each set and write a few words that describe each. Look at each line and reflect upon what the line suggests to you. For example, maybe a wavy line looks like tranquility because it suggests water.

4. Show the sets of lines to another person and ask him or her to describe them. Showing the lines to someone else allows you to see how another person interprets what they see — they may see your lines very differently than you do. Strokes that indicate anger to you may seem energetic and ecstatic to a different person. If your intent and the viewer's interpretation differ, don't worry. It's fine. Just avoid making them incongruent and confusing.

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