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Line, Line Work, and Lines

I love line. As one of the elements of design, line work can lead our eyes through a painting or simply form the edges of shapes and colors in a painting. Lines can be straight or curved, long or short, wide or thin, broken or continuous. Lines can be  gestural marks or textural.

The way in which I use line to begin a painting determines how I react literally and emotionally to the surface of the canvas, paper, or board. Straight lines drawn on the golden mean usually develop into less abstract paintings while loose, gestural lines almost always end in more abstract and expressionistic paintings. Either way, my personal expression is a result of the lines I draw at the start of a painting. Also, what I use to make the initial marks influences the outcome of the paintings. In my “Shades of Gray” series (#s 30, 31,32, and 33 in my Gallery of Paintings), I draw with black India ink to start the paintings. Pencil marks and lines made by scraping acrylic gel medium take me down a different path. Collage pieces also form both lines and textures for some of my work.

When I look at the painting on my easel today, I see straight lines, curved lines, crosshatching, red and dark brown lines, lines that form shapes, and impasto lines formed by a palette knife. The impasto lines are long, short, thin, and thick-all forming interesting textures that give the painting a tactile feeling.

Look at paintings by artist Cy Twombly, Jackson Pollock, and Anselm Kiefer to see very good examples of line work in paintings. What artist’s line work do you like best?

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