Everyone who puts pen to paper will make a mark in a different way. Whether bold or tentative, how you start a drawing is unique to you, and clearly demonstrates your authorship. As you gain confidence, you may become more decisive, but initially it’s good practice to map out your intentions with light marks across the page.
Your chosen media will obviously make a difference—a pencil or fineliner pen is great for faintly mapping out the view, whereas charcoal, pastels or heavier pens and markers will make much stronger and (apparently) more confident marks. You will also need to decide whether your marks are going to be continuous lines or dotted; gentle, and easy on the eye, or angular and bold. Will it be a line drawing, or will you add color? The quality of your marks and lines will need to be more convincing if left uncolored. Different types of mark-making, such as hatching, will also add texture and decorative detail—for example, delineating bricks or timber panels.
DANIEL GREEN
Stone Arch Skyline, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
This involves drawing quickly and lightly, capturing the essence of a view without your pen leaving the paper. It’s so named as you can outline shapes and develop detail by building up contours as you go.
In his sketch above, Daniel Green appears to have ghosted the view in lightly, moving backward and forward, building up the sketch. He’s then worked over some areas in a thicker pen—for example, to define the bridge, and the immediate context of buildings, which are clearly outlined. The higher buildings in the background are left lighter.
JAMES HOBBS
Lambeth Bridge, London, England
The view of London’s River Thames above is another great example of bold “shape-making” marks and rhythms from James Hobbs. It was sketched looking upstream, and shows the high-rise buildings of the Vauxhall area, as well as more distant construction cranes in the rapidly changing Nine Elms district on the South Bank.
SHARI BLAUKOPF
Bovril Building, Montreal, Canada
This impressive image by Shari Blaukopf (above) uses hatching to articulate the facade of a Montreal building. The closely spaced horizontal lines illustrate the brickwork perfectly, while the vertical lines and blobs of color denote the pattern on the main corner elevation.