Mark-making is a technique that explores lines, dots, marks and patterns creating in a drawing and various art mediums. I will show you the top tips/techniques I use when creating my work.
I find music helps me a lot when creating marks, loud, upbeat and expressive music can influence you into drawing harder, gestural and longer marks that can be explored further if you were to use your body. Bringing me to the second tip!
I create large scaled pieces of work so when I draw (with charcoal and other materials) I will put the music on loop and turn it up to the highest volume. From Reggae to Rock music, it doesn't matter as long as it is upbeat and can move your body. You face a black sheet of paper, the music is loud and takes over, you start to react to that. So why not let this be a part of your mark-making? why not let it be a part of your piece? The composition will become stronger and more personal when you include yourself within it, move gesturally and react to the music at hand. When it is high pitch and vibrating, transfer this to the paper. When it is low and emotional, try to interpret this in your mind and let it take over you, let it become you and let it be spoken onto the paper.
Explore different materials (media included) you don't have to stick to the usual standard of drawing and painting. Who says you cannot use a twig or the end of a paintbrush to draw and paint? marks can be created from anything and everything. So go grab a bunch of leaves, dunk your hands or feet in paint and go wild! your ideas are limitless so express that and let yourself free :)
Workshops and exercises are highly important! I used to draw figures and never think about mark-making, I just did scribbles and loops without actually looking deeper. Until my tutor suggested taking a step back and think about what the marks mean and if they are even relevant. You can have marks that are symbolic and some that mean nothing at all and that is completely okay. But if you want to develop your skills, you need to consider the composition, observation and structure. What I mean is, music can help but although you want to be wild and free and not overthink things, it doesn't exactly limit you from planning or considering what shapes, marks and patterns to include that will empower the piece In front of you. I have gained so many ideas from workshops and exercise I didn't know could help.
Work with others! ok, so you are drawing and painting, you feel like it can only be you, it is your artwork and you know what you are doing. What's to say you can't include others or ask them for their opinion. Collaborating with dancer's encourage me to be speedy with my work and take out detail, thus developing marks I have never created before but use in all of my work now.
Working with both images and dancer's, for example, my recent project is in relation to dance so I work from ballet images because they stretch their bodies into awkward yet powerful angles. However, I also use dancer's (students who study hip-hop, ballet etc) and I draw from them when they move, this gives me an entirely different way of creating marks. The photograph lets me concentrate on shapes and detail whereas the dancer moving constantly encourages me to create marks like repeated lines, dots and linear aspects that become endless. This is similar to the other tips of workshops etc but can become a different tip if you were to consider other ways of using movement to influence your marks.
I could go on further with this post but I am going to keep it hush hush until next time :) I hope some of the tips help you and please just keep experimenting and try not to overthink anything.