The Thinker
Corot, The Thinker, 1854. Cliché-verre on ivory photographic paper.
Pins mark where to look before you draw.
The Art Institute of Chicago · Gift of the Print and Drawing Club
The Thinker
Almost all dark: how little scratching a plate needs
1854: a seated figure under a dark canopy with a patch of pale distance. The plate is mostly untouched, so the print is mostly black, with light arriving only where Corot scratched hard. The notan lesson in its most extreme form: a small light shape in a large dark one.
- Difficulty
- Time
- about 1.5 h
- You draw with
- scratchboard and stylus, or 6B tone and a kneaded eraser
Why this one
- Design by a small light in a large dark, the reverse of most beginner drawings.
- Teaches restraint: most of the plate is left alone.
From your kit
The whole kit →- 1Grafwood 4B laid flat, then the Mono Zero lay an even tone with the side, then draw the lights out with the eraser as if it were the stylus.
- 2Kneaded eraser (warm it) and the clean Mono Zero lift the lights out of the mass; the Mono Zero for sky holes and lit edges.
- 3Alpha sketchbook 9 x 6 draw at the book's size and keep the proportions; date the page.
In general, this study asks for
- A scratchboard (black clay-coated) and stylus, or
- 4B graphite laid as a flat tone plus a Tombow Mono Zero eraser
Watch first
All videos →Curators handle Corot's actual glass plates and prints. French; the images carry it even without captions.
YouTube
The plan
3 stages · ~65 min- 1
Where is the light?
10 minTwo-value thumbnail: one small light shape, the rest dark.
Checklist0 / 1 - 2
Scratch only the light
45 minDense marks in the light region, fading quickly to nothing. Resist touching the dark. The figure is a silhouette against the light.
Checklist0 / 2 - 3
Compare
10 minInvert, compare, box.
Checklist0 / 1
What it should look like
- A dark board with one worked passage that reads as a landscape with a figure.
Where it goes wrong
- Scratching the dark to 'show' the trees. Fear of emptiness. The dark is the picture. Leave it.
Log this session
Start the clock when you pick up the pencil. Stop it when you put it down. Log it. Every session counts toward the box.
Status
How did it go?
Before this, ideally
