Making marks - Exercise 1

The first exercise is about making marks and how they look depending on what kind of pencil/marker you use and how you hold this pencil/marker. For each of the following words (fast - slow - hard - sharp - soft - delicate - bumpy - smooth - sensuous - sad - happy) I used the same pencils (1H, 7B and 4B), a Pritt Artist Pen Bold and an oil pastel (blunt and pointed/sharp side). Every time I used them in this order starting at the top left and ending at the bottom right. For each word I used the same type of marking.
For the first word fast I drew quickly lines from left to right. This is how the marks look like:

                                      

For the word slow I used circular lines holding the pencil loosely in my hand and writing with the side of the pencil:

For hard I held the pencil at an almost 90 degrees angle to the paper and pressed hard to make the (linear) marks. This is the first mark where the markings of 1H show. With the other words the lines were too light in color to show up in the scan.

With sharp again an almost 90 degrees angle for the pencil. The markings are not round but have sharp angles. As the Artist pen has a brushtype top, it was only possible to make the sharp angles by holding the pen very lightly so that only the top of the brush touched the paper.

For soft I held the pencils very loosely and the tip hardly touched the paper. As markings just light lines, no specific design. 

                                       

A similar position of the pencil for delicate in a curly design.

Bumpy is my favorite. Think about bumper cars on the fair :-). Pencil was held in an almost 90 degrees angle, only a light pressure on the pencil while drawing.

For the word smooth I used serpentine like lines, light pressure on the pencil.

For sensuous my lines were based (loosely) on the female shape. Intriguing this might be the effect commercials have on our thinking. I noticed that the design improved when I put a second layer over the original drawing. With pencil and oil pastel I could play a bit with the pressure so that the second layer really layed on top. With the ink brush pen this was not possible.

 With the word sad my mind makes connections with tears, bars, being locked in. This shows in my samples. The pencil was held in an almost 90 degrees angle and a lot of pressure was put on it while drawing.

 For happy I used open wavy lines. Pressure was light when drawing these

To me some of the words call for the same type of marks, like slow, soft, smooth, sensuous. I think that this is because the meaning of the words is not that much different (of course depending on where you are and how you use them). Does this make sense?

Bumpy and sharp are my favorites. To me they show a lot of action.