Less about the Mark, More about the Tool

Two of my favorite things happen to coincide - those things would be tai chi, and painting. What? you say? How could an avant garde gent posessing a thoroughly modern savoire faire have such a traditional - indeed, a SCHOLARLY - take on the arts? After all, weren't the scholarly painters of China and Japan all about their wu-shu and their swords and cultivating and stuff through the brush? How can you claim such a - such an - OLD FASHIONED take on art making? Haven't you been reading art forum? CRAFT IS OBSOLETE! WE ARE ALL USING CAPITAL LETTERS NOW!
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Thank you art strawman for your opinion. Now that you have stated it so emphatically, let me destroy your logic with a well reasoned and personable rebuttal.
Wow, I got lost for a second.
In the previous post, I wrote at length about mark making in painting - expressing a taste for Velazquez - to summarize - earlier painters used detail to describe an object, as painting developed, painters allowed a mark to describe that same detail. Knowing, not scientifically certainly, that the eye loves to organize things into patterns and will fill in the detail. Hence a daub of burnt umber mixed with ultramarine blue placed just so can become the popes nostril.

Let me back this up and rearrange my thoughts for a second.

Drawing and painting are about arranging a series of marks on a surface to suggest something either representational or entirely abstract. They are about creating an order that the eyes arrange to suggest something - a story , an idea - you get the picture, right?
What is the difference between an art student's figure drawing and a figure drawing done by, oh, John singer Sargent?

The components of the two are the same - a pencil and paper. Both have the same tools at their disposal - the rules of figure drawing - measure, proportion, perspective - all are apparent in both images. What's makes the difference then between the students work (which is nice, btw, I'm not dissing it - just using it to draw a comparison) and the master's? I hate the word 'Talent' or 'Genius' - both words are so dismissive of work. Sargent started somewhere, and while he might have possessed a natural aptitude for the work, he did not start where the posted image starts - he had to work to get there. Get my point?
Experience is a fine word, but its really just a bucket for all the earned discrimination that goes into this kind of drawing.
I will say (since this is my pedastal, I get to!) that the difference between the two is the editorial quality that goes into each of the tools used.
We are tool using mammals, that's what National Geographic tells us. We like to break things with rocks and stab things with sticks. We have thumbs. Indeed, before we even pick up something external to us we need to consider our innate tools - hands and eyes.
It is through our eyes that we let the brain create context for the visual world. It is through our eyes first that we learn to discriminate line and color and drama.
Our hands, even devoid of pencil make gestures. Our hands, an extension of spineshoulderbicepforearm allow us to direct those gestures with finesse, outward. And I have to mention the connection to spine because an artist like Chuck Close does not have the articulated use of his hands, yet he paints. That mark has to be directed from somewhere. Okay - observation now out in the weeds, pulling it back...
We direct a gesture through our body onto an external surface - that gesture can be a light caress or a punch. That gesture can be made with a tool - a pencil, for instance onto a piece of paper for dramatic effect.
The difference between the student work and the master work is the ability to see and finesse that gesture for added resonance.
The students work is capable, but everything is done with the same weight on the stylus, and with the same vigor.
Look instead at the Sargent: the lines are simple and lyrical, tracing the contours of the body and allowing the weight of the line suggest body weight and shadow. the shadows themselves are applied with a minimum of editorial interference - there is not a lot of feeling out the shape before applying the final mark - instead the graphite is caressed onto the paper.
In short, the difference between the two is the ability to control a greater degree of mark making to get to the end product. It is at once an act of repetition, editiorial precision and artistic integrity. To put it blusterously. (the blogspot auto dictionary believes 'blusterously' is not a word. It's not. I just made it up!)
The art of drawing is about knowing how to use your body to control the tool for the greatest arrange of effects - which brings me back to taichi as a wonderful connecting tool.
In Zheng tai chi, the effort of practice is to use to the practice to get the body to relax deeply. The more relaxed the body, the greater the effect of the practice. Whether its integral to the practice or a side effect, you learn to connect your hands to your spine - to channel the movement of your hands first through your pelvic floor, up your spine, out your arms and through your fingertips. in a sense, you are learning by stroking the air how to apply different kinds of pressure - you're building sensitivity. This same sensitivity is applied through a tool external to your body, pencil, brush, sword, garden hoe, etc etc.
It's all context, I guess.