# Dynamic Mark Making / Drawing with Expression & Creativity - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/dynamic-mark-making-drawing-with-expression-and-creativity/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Illustration & Drawing · Solid intro · Rated 8 /10 # Dynamic Mark Making / Drawing with Expression & Creativity By Gareth B. Davies · Updated July 2026 Brent Eviston · Master Artist & Instructor Beginner · 90 min A tight five-day module on making lines feel emotional and tactile, not just accurate, though beginners with zero drawing base may struggle without the earlier course. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fdynamic-mark-making-drawing-with-expression-and-creativity%2F77652048) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## What it actually teaches Brent Eviston's Dynamic Mark Making is built around a single reframe: a line does two jobs at once. It describes a form, and it carries an emotion or sensation whether the artist intends it or not. The course spends its five core lessons walking through that idea in increasing specificity. It opens with a taxonomy of line itself: vertical lines read as upright and stable, horizontals as calm and safe, obliques as either dynamic or unstable depending on the viewer. That framework becomes the toolkit for everything after it. The middle stretch is where the course earns its keep. Day two isolates emotion from representation entirely, asking students to draw abstract marks for feelings like anger or nervousness without drawing an angry face or a nervous posture, a deliberately narrow constraint that forces attention onto pressure, size, and edge quality rather than subject matter. Day three pushes that further into philosophical territory, with a demonstration drawing meant to evoke atomic vibration and cosmic scale using nothing but ascending, softening vertical strokes. It is a strange and memorable exercise, if a slightly indulgent one. ## Where the technique gets concrete Day four is the most transferable lesson in the course. Working through a helium balloon, a water balloon, a pillow, and a rock, the instruction shows exactly how line weight, contour direction, and darkness communicate weight and texture: light, thin, upward-tapering lines for something lifting, dark, thick, downward-pulling lines for something heavy, soft curves for a pillow, hard jagged angles for a rock. This is drawing instruction with enough specificity to apply immediately, not just as an abstract principle but as a repeatable decision process, asking what the object feels like at every stage of the mark. The final lesson on atmospherics covers two related but distinct ideas: literal atmospheric perspective (contrast, saturation, and edge sharpness fading with distance) and the more abstract sense of mood created by activating empty space around a subject. The value-wash technique demonstrated here, laying tone with the side of the pencil in overlapping passes to avoid visible individual strokes, is a genuinely useful rendering skill on its own, separate from the perspective lesson it is nested inside. ## Assessment At 90 minutes across five short lessons plus a trailer and welcome video, this is a compact, well-sequenced unit rather than a comprehensive course. Its clearest strength is specificity: every demonstration names a real object, walks through the actual pencil handling, and ties it back to the emotional-communication framework from day one. The projects are structured for daily practice, each with a clear brief and enough looseness to reward experimentation. The weakness is context. This is explicitly the second entry in a seven-part series, and the instruction leans on skills, like blocking basic shapes and building a light foundation before adding detail, that are assumed rather than taught here. Students who skip the first course will follow the mark-making concepts fine but may stumble on the construction steps underneath every demonstration. For anyone who already has that foundation, though, this is an efficient, well-taught expansion of what a line can do beyond simply being accurate. The standout The tactile-line demonstration, where opposing objects like a water balloon and a helium balloon are drawn with entirely different line weight and direction to make one feel heavy and the other feel like it is lifting. ## What you will learn - · How to vary pencil pressure, grip, and speed to produce a wide range of expressive marks - · How to translate a named emotion (anger, nervousness) into abstract line quality without drawing literal imagery - · How to make an object's line work communicate weight and texture, like a heavy water balloon versus a light helium one - · How to apply atmospheric perspective (contrast, saturation, edge softness) to suggest depth and distance - · How to use value washes with the side of the pencil to build soft, gradated tone without visible strokes - · How to leave pentimenti (visible construction lines) as a deliberate stylistic and expressive choice Best for: Someone who already has basic drawing fundamentals and wants to move from technically accurate lines toward expressive, emotionally resonant mark-making. Skip it if: Total beginners with no prior instruction in shape construction, since this is explicitly positioned as the second course in a series and assumes that groundwork is already in place. Clarity of Instruction Engaging Teacher Helpful Examples Actionable Steps [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fdynamic-mark-making-drawing-with-expression-and-creativity%2F77652048)