Taking our cues from Nam June Paik's "Zen for Head" (pictured above), in which the artist used his own head as a brush for his sumi ink drawing, this week's assignment is about exploring alternative ways of making marks with ink. Begin by doing some experiments with various kinds of objects or parts of your body and seeing what kinds of marks each one makes when dipped in ink and applied to paper.
Using sumi ink and your chosen "tool," make an abstract drawing using only this tool. You may apply the mark just once (as in Paik's drawing) or a number of times, using layering and mark density to create an interesting composition. Whatever you do, be sure to practice your mark a lot on scrap paper before applying it to your final drawing, and give great consideration to its (or their) placement on the paper. Keep Chinese calligraphy in mind as you go about this, and recall the importance of "emptiness" in the Chinese and Chinese-inspired images we looked at today.
Below is another unconventional tool drawing, this one by the artist Robert Rauschenberg. His tool was a tire.
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