An Artist's Sketchbook

Rambling...

I was reading an article in "Artist's Magazine" about Mark Makers, or artists from the renaissance era and their drawing and sketching skills. Referring to sketching or drawing as making marks on paper (or other substrates) is interesting. When you draw you are so focused on the creation of detail or tone that you sometimes forget what is simply going on. You are making marks.
It truly is a miraculous thing. Creating something from nothing. A blank piece of paper becomes a deep forest or a crowded city street. Art seems to be truth. Its consciousness. I think of the first primitive man who picked up a piece of burned wood and scraped it across a stone. His eyes wide with wonder at the mark it left behind. He had made a discovery, he had created something. That primitive creature could have used that stone for possesive purposes. He may have placed it on a pile of fruits and piece of meat to make it known to others that it is his alone. He may have fought to defend his possesion of food which was now marked. He could have become greedy. Or he could have taken the rock which he marked and used it as a gift. Giving it to another to show compassion or love.
Primitive art could have been the catalyst towards evolution and modern man. It could have been the trigger that invoked consciousness. It could have been the apple Eve gave to Adam. The tree of knowledge gave Adam the ability to see as an artist. To see the world apart from himself through color and contrast. Art gives us the ability to see ourselves.
In almost all ancient cultures the "Shaman" or holy man was also an artist. You have to wonder what came first the artist or the shaman. He had the ability to create images that represented the world around him. That ability gave him power and magical traits. The ability to make representative marks in clay tablets gave the scholars of Egypt power and the pharaoh supreme rule.
Marks where the beginning of alphabets and written language, of architecture and organized society.

Of course, non of the above could be true at all. Just the rambling of an artist's mind.