Studio Montefanna · Fiesole · April 2026
A visual introduction to mark-making, representation, and seeing
The origins of mark-making
Palaeolithic handprints (Chauvet, c. 32,000 BCE; Altamira, c. 15,000 BCE) to BIM and AI-generated imagery: drawing encompasses the entire range of human graphic production.
From perspective machines to digital tools
Vignola 1583 · Fludd 1617 · Pantograph 1608 · Farey Elliptograph 1819 · Suardi Conchoid Machine 1752 · Leupold Anamorphosis Machine 1713 · Stanley Geometric Pen 1888 · Fisher Spirograph 1968 · Sutherland Sketchpad 1963
Vignola, Le Due Regole della Prospettiva Pratica, Rome, 1583
Perspective Proper for Artists and Architects, 1725
Pozzo's illusionistic ceiling frescoes extend architectural space into imaginary vaults. His treatise provided systematic tools for constructing complex perspectival illusions at architectural scale.
Sant'Ignazio, Rome; Jesuitenkirche, Vienna
1760-1834 · Systematic architectural typology
Durand's Precis des lecons d'architecture (1802-05) reduced architectural history to a combinatorial grid of standardised elements. This systematic approach anticipates computational design methodologies.
Graphite · Charcoal · Indian Ink
The mark-making sample sheet shows the full range of graphic possibilities within three basic media: from fine graphite lines at different pressures, through charcoal at varying consistencies, to ink applied by brush, roller, comb, spatula, and finger.
1910-1962 · Vawdavitch, 1955
Kline's monumental black-and-white gestural canvases transform drawing into pure tectonic force. Industrial house-painting brushes at architectural scale; the mark as energetic event rather than descriptive trace.
Franz Kline, Vawdavitch, 1955
b. 1970 · Large-scale drawing-painting
Mehretu layers architectural plans and geographic data beneath storm-like gestural mark fields. Her work investigates the tension between systematic organisation and gestural immediacy.
Julie Mehretu, studio photograph
1930-2017 · British abstract painter
Associated with the St Ives School, Bell's drawings alternate between loosely structured landscape abstraction and stark gestural reduction. Spatial logic generated from material incident rather than prior compositional intention.
Trevor Bell, works on paper
b. 1937 · Pencil and crayon portraiture
Hockney's portrait drawings achieve economy through sustained looking: a single weighted line carries structural information and psychological presence.
David Hockney, portrait drawings
1898-1986 · Etching and drypoint
Moore's graphic work extends his sculptural concerns with mass and void into two dimensions. Cross-hatching as tonal and volumetric device creates the illusion not merely of light and shadow but of palpable weight.
Henry Moore, Hand and Sheep etchings
b. 1958 · Cyanotype and watercolour
Prendergast deploys the absence of mark as a structuring principle. Presence conveyed through partial erasure: what is withheld carries as much weight as what is delineated.
Kathy Prendergast, works on paper
1922-2004 · Charcoal and paint on paper
Golub's drawings address political violence with raw directness. The fragmented, broken line describing the figure under duress is not aesthetic choice but political: the mark enacts the subject matter.
Leon Golub, figure studies
b. 1941 · Watercolour on notebook paper
Tuttle works at the threshold of visibility: diminutive watercolour marks on lined notebook paper. How small can a mark be and still act as form? How much of the reading is supplied by the viewer?
Richard Tuttle, watercolours on paper
1840-1916 · Lithograph, 1896
Redon's noirs exploit the tonal range of lithographic crayon to create images hovering between interior and exterior states. His mastery of deep shadow and withheld light anticipates twentieth-century drawing's investigation of psychological interiority.
Odilon Redon, from La Tentation de Saint Antoine, 1896
1940-1993 · Watercolour figure study
The figurative works use splatter, wash, and free line to construct the body as energetic field rather than anatomical structure.
Hannah Wilke, watercolour on paper
1940-1993 · Abstract composition
Bold organic forms in oil pastel and paint treat the body as biological colour-event.
Hannah Wilke, mixed media on paper
1932-2017 · Monoprint and hand-applied colour
Hodgkin's prints demonstrate how the frame and painted edge become active components of the pictorial field. A single hue in tension between two different interior tonalities can simultaneously construct depth, enclose space, and flatten pictorial surface.
Howard Hodgkin, monoprint
b. 1963 · Monoprint: On My Knees, 2021
A single fluid contour line carries extraordinary psychological weight through economy and directness of autobiographical address.
Tracey Emin, On My Knees, 2021
b. 1963 · Monoprint: Proctobet, 2003
Economy of line as psychological instrument: the drawn line as confessional record.
Tracey Emin, Proctobet, 2003
Self-portrait series · lithographs
Iterative repetition of the same mark generates a range of psychological registers within formally consistent compositional constraints.
Tracey Emin, self-portrait print series
Florence installation, c. 2024
The large paintings extend gestural drawing qualities to architectural scale: crimson, grey, and black washes and drips recalling both Action Painting and Expressionist figuration.
Tracey Emin, painting, Florence installation
Florence, c. 2024 · detail
The figurative gesture dissolves into pure painterly energy at this scale.
Tracey Emin, large-scale painting
Florence, c. 2024 · detail
Pink, grey, and white ground with gestural figuration: the body as mark, the mark as body.
Tracey Emin, large-scale painting, detail
The answer is yes: but perhaps not in the way you think. Drawing is not the reproduction of appearances. It is the record of a sustained act of looking.
The week's toolkit
Graphite pencils · Charcoal sticks (vine and compressed) · Black Indian ink · Brushes, rollers, combs, spatulas. Each medium shapes both the mark and the attention required to make it.
Drawing materials photograph
1415-1492 · Fresco, detail
Piero's figures occupy space with luminous geometric certitude. Light as primary spatial structure: dissolving contour and unifying form into architectonic volume.
Piero della Francesca, fresco detail
1452-1519 · Red and black chalk, 1510-13
Layers of chalk strokes so fine as to approach powdered pigment, dissolving the boundary between light and shadow. Form emerges from differential density of hatch without a single explanatory contour.
Leonardo da Vinci, Head of a Woman, 1510-13
Chalk on paper · detail
The eye region is entirely modelled in gradated tone without a single explanatory contour: form emerges from differential density of hatch. The model for Day 4's chiaroscuro investigation.
Leonardo da Vinci, detail of chalk drawing
1431-1506 · Pen and ink, c. 1465-70
Decisive pen strokes carrying lapidary authority. Cross-hatching along surface curvature creates simultaneous volumetric description and decorative rhythm.
Andrea Mantegna, pen and ink drawing
1457-1504 · Pen and brown wash, 1488
Pen line establishes spatial relations and gesture; bistre wash establishes light and atmosphere. Two distinct mark systems contributing different information: directly anticipating the studio panels' combinatory approach.
Filippino Lippi, compositional study, 1488
1720-1778 · Carceri d'invenzione, 1761
Architecturally literate perspective constructing spaces that cannot physically exist. Cross-hatching building tonal density where structural logic dissolves into overwhelming atmosphere.
Piranesi, Carceri d'invenzione, Plate VII, 1761
Carceri · details
The accumulation of marks reworked through multiple states: the drawing as archaeological record of its own making.
Piranesi, Carceri d'invenzione, details
1732-1806 · Pencil and brown wash, 1780s
Pencil underdrawing with fluid sepia wash producing proto-Impressionist dissolution of figure and ground. The gap between a mark's graphic identity and its perceptual reading as space is a central subject of the course.
Jean-Honore Fragonard, compositional study
1725-1805 · Sanguine on paper, 1777
Academic draughtsmanship at its most analytically precise. Hatching following surface direction with anatomical exactitude: creating not merely tonal modelling but a map of volumetric structure.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze, portrait head in sanguine
1776-1837 · Graphite on paper
Direct records of how a trained eye translates weather, atmosphere, and light into graphite mark. A vocabulary of textured strokes conveying spatial depth and meteorological condition simultaneously.
John Constable, sketchbook drawing
1832-1883 · Graphite on paper, 1861
Economy of means: the marks are few. Directional strokes establish texture; a single curve defines form. Anticipating Modernist investigations of the minimum informational requirement for figural representation.
Edouard Manet, Cat, 1861
1840-1916 · Conte crayon, 1890
The figure coaxed from darkness, light emerging from gradated tone without resort to outline. Profound influence on Seurat's tonal investigations.
Odilon Redon, Portrait of a Woman, 1890
1880-1938 · Pen and ink, 1914
Pen used with graphic velocity: marks angular, redundant, and spatially ambiguous. Generating a field of agitated energy about the experience of the landscape rather than its objective appearance.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, ink drawings, 1914
1928-2011 · Pencil and paint on canvas
Graphite notation on paint-washed canvas: the palimpsest of mark and erasure as subject. Drawing as a form of writing that is not language.
Cy Twombly, works on canvas
Wax crayon on paper
The scribbled notation and looping crayon passages constitute a sustained meditation on classical antiquity, Mediterranean landscape, and the relationship between language and mark.
Cy Twombly, crayon works on paper
Red crayon: Suma
Twombly lived and worked in Italy for much of his career. He is perhaps the artist most directly relevant to this course: his life and work were shaped by the same Italian contexts the course inhabits.
Cy Twombly, Suma
Red paint on canvas
The looping red passages recall Dionysian ritual and classical mythology: drawing as embodied inscription and historical memory.
Cy Twombly, roses paintings
1928-2007 · Pencil · systematic hatching
Bands of directional hatching at progressively denser intervals demonstrate that tonal value and spatial structure can be generated through purely algorithmic means. What does drawing communicate? Does meaning reside in the mark or in the looking?
Sol LeWitt, wall drawing
1571-1610 · San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome
Extreme chiaroscuro as pictorial language: not modelling device but primary carrier of spatial and dramatic meaning. Remove the light and the composition is unintelligible. Participants will encounter this tradition in the Uffizi on Day 4.
Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew, 1599-1600
1486-1551 · Full-scale cartoon on paper
Large-scale preparatory cartoons for the Siena Cathedral marble pavement: precision of architectural planning combined with expressive force of Mannerist figure drawing. Pouncing holes indicate the transfer process participants will encounter in the studio panels.
Beccafumi, cartoon for Siena Cathedral pavement
Cartoon details · hatching and drapery
Each stroke follows anatomical and drapery logic while remaining freely gestural: the marks read simultaneously as descriptive notation and as independent linear events.
Beccafumi, cartoon details
1475-1564 · Black chalk on paper
Late chalk drawings for the Crucifixion: obsessive re-working over decades producing surfaces of almost geological depth. The chalk strokes, working and reworking in different directions, create a continuous tonal field as if fused with the paper grain.
Michelangelo, study for the Crucifixion, c. 1555-60. Casa Buonarroti, Florence
Black chalk · Crucifixion studies
The great spiritual investigation and the technical procedure are inseparable: the surface is simultaneously devotional object and drawing lesson.
Michelangelo, Crucifixion studies, Casa Buonarroti
Black chalk · detail
Extreme close-up reveals the chalk strokes as individual events fusing into continuous tonal field: the material logic of sfumato in drawing.
Michelangelo, chalk study detail
1859-1891 · Conte crayon on Michallet paper
The crayon touches only the raised tooth of the paper grain; recessed valleys remain white. A tonal field built from optical mixture of black and white: no grey, only the visual impression produced by the alternation of black point and white gap.
Georges Seurat, Conte crayon drawings, 1882-85
Conte crayon · landscape
The dark mass of trees and horizon coaxed from pure black Conte on rough paper: atmospheric depth achieved through systematic tonal accumulation rather than detail.
Georges Seurat, landscape study in Conte
Conte crayon · industrial landscape
Seurat demonstrates that extreme tonal simplification: reducing the visible world to three or four tonal zones, produces not flatness but concentrated spatial power.
Georges Seurat, Conte crayon study
Conte crayon · figure study
The figure emerges from darkness: not drawn but coaxed from the white ground. The lightest tone carries the descriptive weight while the darkest resolves into pure atmosphere.
Georges Seurat, figure study in Conte
Mont Sainte-Victoire with Pine, c. 1886-87
Cezanne abandons tonal modelling in favour of colour modulation: small parallel strokes of adjacent chromatic value. Each brushstroke simultaneously describes local colour, tonal value, and the orientation of a planar facet.
Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine, c. 1887. Courtauld Gallery
Greyscale and threshold conversion
When converted to greyscale, the tonal architecture becomes readable as an abstract composition of light, mid-tone, and dark. The threshold analysis collapses this into binary: pure compositional structure.
Paul Cezanne, tonal analysis
Philadelphia version, c. 1904-06
The later paintings fragment the surface into interlocking planes. The tonal analysis reveals how chromatic modulation encodes a rigorous underlying tonal structure.
Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1904-06. Philadelphia Museum
1888-1976 · Homage to the Square, 1961
Two squares of identical colour placed against different background colours appear to be different colours. Colour is not a fixed property of surfaces but a relational phenomenon constituted by adjacency: the theoretical basis for Day 2's tempera work.
Josef Albers, Homage to the Square, 1961
The two small squares are exactly the same colour
The ochre square appears darker on orange and lighter on blue. This demonstrates that the Armenian bole underpainting will modify the perceived temperature and luminosity of every subsequent colour layer, including gold leaf.
After Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, 1963
1775-1851 · Oil on canvas, 1840
The greyscale analysis reveals the extraordinary tonal architecture underlying the chromatic surface. Stripped of colour, the composition is a study in dissolution: figure-ground distinction barely holds. Tonal structure is the primary compositional decision.
J.M.W. Turner, The Slave Ship, 1840. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Monoprint · tonal analysis
The black-and-white version of the green monoprint reveals how the same tonal structure that generates spatial depth in the colour work functions as pure abstract composition when colour is removed.
Howard Hodgkin, monoprint and tonal analysis
b. 1943 · Light installation
Turrell makes no marks on paper. His work consists entirely of structured light in architectural space: revealing the constructedness of visual perception. Together with Albers, he establishes the theoretical framework for Day 2's investigation of colour as relational, constructed experience.
James Turrell, light installation
1901-1966 · Oil and graphite on canvas
Giacometti's paintings are the most radical investigations of perceptual uncertainty in modern Western art. The figure is repeatedly located and relocated; the surrounding space collapses and re-establishes. Every mark is provisional, every image incomplete.
Alberto Giacometti, works on canvas
Studio drawings and paintings
Working and reworking the same motifs: studio, wife, brother. He produced surfaces of layered graphite and oil that register the impossibility of fixing appearance under sustained attention.
Alberto Giacometti, studio drawings
Tonal analysis of paintings
The tonal analysis of the Giacometti paintings reveals how obsessive reworking produces a tonal density far exceeding conventional modelling: the surface is a geological record of looking.
Alberto Giacometti, paintings, tonal analysis