Using a small sketchbook and holding firstly a pencil, then a pen with the tips of fingers and thumb and moving only the wrist, there really wasn’t much control over the marks being made. There was a small range of motion and the marks were very light. With a pen there was even less control and certain areas didn’t mark, just scratched.
Then using an A1 sheet of paper and charcoal sticks, I stood at arms length from the upright paper and tried making downward strokes firstly with the right hand, then the left working inwards from each side. I found this worked better with quicker strokes. It felt a lot more controlled being further back from the paper and having a larger range of motion. Moving further back helped to control the straightness of the lines, but this way of working feels quite stiff.
Working from the shoulder feels more fluid, especially with the right arm. The left was a little stiff, but soon loosened. Working on a larger scale and using more movement feels a lot more natural and completely different to how I would normally work. Definitely something to explore more of in the future.
