Silverpoint

14 studies · about 26 hours · 5 weeks at 20 min a day

Architecture intensive

Arches, tracery, mouldings, masonry, roofs, windows, ruins: the Architecture unit with its master plates attached.
  1. 1
    Constructing an equilateral pointed arch: two arcs, each with its centre at the opposite springing point and a radius equal to the span, meeting at the apex; plus lancet and drop variantsEQUILATERAL ARCH · RADIUS = SPANspringing linecentre Bcentre Aapexr = spanVARIANTSlancet: r >spandrop: r <spanCompass on paper, thumb-and-pencil in the field. Mark the two centres, swing twoarcs, done.Melrose, Dryburgh, Rievaulx: once you can strike this arch you can draw any abbey in Britain.

    Foundation · Cotman

    The pointed arch

    Three constructions, then a window from Cley Church

  2. 2
    Tower of the Church of Haute Allemagne near Caen

    Master study · Cotman

    Tower of the Church of Haute Allemagne

    A cube, a pyramid, round arches, forty stones

  3. 3
    A two-light Gothic window built from geometry: the main pointed arch, a central mullion, two smaller pointed heads, and a circle in the spandrel that becomes a quatrefoilTWO-LIGHT WINDOW · CIRCLES AND ARCScircle in the spandrelbecomes a quatrefoilsub-arches: half the spanmullionTracery is geometry you can reconstruct, not lace you must copy. Find the circles.Cotman's Cley Church: every window head is a compass construction drawn freehand.

    Foundation · Cotman

    Tracery

    A two-light window from geometry, then the east window of Cley

  4. 4
    Cley Church, Norfolk

    Master study · Cotman

    Cley Church, Norfolk

    An architectural elevation in line and one wash

  5. 5
    A string course moulding in section and in elevation under light from the upper left: a bright top fillet, a soft halftone on the curve, a dark underside and a cast shadow on the wall belowSECTIONlightwallELEVATION · WHAT YOU DRAWtop fillet: papercurve: halftoneunderside: 8cast shadow: 6A moulding is four horizontal bands of value. Get the bands right and the stoneturns.The darkest line on any building is the underside of a projecting course. Save your 8B for it.

    Foundation · Meryon

    Mouldings and cast shadows

    A cornice in four bands, and a buttress that casts

  6. 6
    Hotel de Ville, Louvain, from Facsimiles of Sketches made in Flanders and Germany

    Master study · Prout

    Hôtel de Ville, Louvain

    A passage of Gothic facade in the broken line

  7. 7
    Stone wall: on the left every stone is outlined and the wall looks like a net; on the right only the courses run through, a few stones are suggested near the edges and the eye, and tone carries the restWRONG · EVERY STONE DRAWNRIGHT · COURSES, STONES SUGGESTEDDraw the horizontal courses as broken lines. Add vertical joints only near openings,corners and the bottom. Let tone do the middle.Cotman's Haute Allemagne tower: hundreds of stones implied, perhaps forty actually drawn.

    Foundation · Cotman

    Masonry coursing

    A wall passage after Cotman, then a real wall

  8. 8
    A pitched slate roof in perspective: rows converge toward the vanishing point, the near rows show individual slates and the far rows dissolve into tonenear eave: slatesdrawnridge: tone onlyA roof is a tilted plane: light if it faces the sky, with its texture fading as itrecedes.Count your drawn slates. More than two rows is a texture, more than four is a mistake.

    Foundation · Prout

    Roofs and windows

    A farmhouse: tilted planes and holes in thick walls

  9. 9
    Ponte Vecchio, Florence

    Master study · Pennell

    Ponte Vecchio, Florence

    Stacked windows shrinking along a bridge

  10. 10
    Doorway, Venice

    Master study · Pennell

    Doorway, Venice

    The whole value range inside one opening

  11. 11
    A ruined abbey wall read as silhouette: one big stable mass, an irregular broken skyline, dark window voids, and vegetation softening the lower edgebrokenskylinegrowthsky behindwall behindA ruin is one mass with its top bitten off. Some voids show sky, some show darkwall. Never all the same.Cotman's Normandy castle, Prout's Norham, Forrest's Dryburgh: the skyline does the storytelling.

    Foundation · Cotman

    The ruin

    A master copy of A Castle in Normandy, then the structure of Rievaulx

  12. 12
    A Castle in Normandy

    Master study · Cotman

    A Castle in Normandy

    A ruin's skyline drawn with more care than anything else

  13. 13
    The same doorway drawn without and with a small figure; the figure's head sits on the eye-level line, which fixes the scale of everythingNO FIGURE · ANY SIZEWITH A FIGURE · A CATHEDRAL DOOReye levelStanding on the same ground as you, every adult's head is on your eye level, near orfar. Only the feet move.Prout dropped two or three figures into every street. They are rulers, not people.

    Foundation · Prout

    The street with figures

    Prout's Ulm: eye level, bays, broken line, and rulers that look like people

  14. 14
    A Village Street: Dardagny

    Master study · Corot

    A Village Street: Dardagny

    Corot draws a building in sunlight