The Woodcutter
Corot, The Woodcutter, 1856. 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 Woodcutter
Figure as a dark note in a scratched wood
1856: a woodcutter small among trees. Corot drops a figure into most of his clichés-verre, as scale and as a dark accent. The lesson is where to leave the plate untouched (which prints dark) so that the figure reads.
- Difficulty
- Time
- about 1 h
- You draw with
- scratchboard and stylus, or 4B tone and a precision eraser
Why this one
- Figures for scale in a landscape, as marks not people.
- Using unscratched plate as the dark accent.
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 press-and-lift corrections only; the Mono Zero for a single sharp light.
- 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.
YouTubeThe plan
2 stages · ~50 min- 1
Wood first, figure as a gap
40 minScratch the wood. Leave the figure's shape nearly untouched: a dark silhouette by omission.
Checklist0 / 1 - 2
Compare
10 minInvert, compare, box.
Checklist0 / 1
What it should look like
- A wood of white marks with a small dark figure that you did not draw.
Where it goes wrong
- Drawing the figure with lines. Habit. The figure is where you do not scratch.
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
