How to use paint and color to relax and express yourself.

When I’m not sure what to paint, or simply want to relax and play with colors, I do what is called mark making.

Mark making can be easy, fun and lead to discovering more about your own style and what you enjoy painting. 

How do you do it? Just take out your paints, some colors, and start making lines, shapes, stripes. Make them thick, thin, solid or perforated. Use different brushes, or the same brush.

Explore what it feels like to use the tip of the brush, the flat of the brush, to move quickly across the page, or slowly.

Turn on music and make marks in response to the music. Notice your mood and make marks that reflect how you feel.

Think of someone you care about and make shapes, squiggles, scrawls, lines that reflect what emerges as you think of that person. 

The paintings that you see here were done by laying down a light watercolor wash of color (or many colors), letting that layer dry, then going wild with mark making, filling a large watercolor paper.

Once I was satisfied with the blend of marks, I cut up the paper into smaller rectangles (2 X 4 inches or 2 1/2 X 3 1/2 inches), which allowed me to see little paintings that can become the fronts of cards, or be arranged as new artworks. Or simply enjoyed as references and tiny creations.

As you play with mark making, if you want to check out a wonderful resource on drawing that has quite a bit to say on the subject, you might enjoy The Drawing Mind by Deborah Putnoi. This is where I learned a lot of mark making and how to use mark making to connect to and express my senses.