Silverpoint

Tower at the Lake's Horizon

Tower at the Lake's Horizon (Tour á L'Horizon d'un Lac), Corot, 1871
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Corot, Tower at the Lake's Horizon (Tour á L'Horizon d'un Lac), 1871. Cliché-verre.

Pins mark where to look before you draw.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1934

Master studyLine + MassTowers, forts and bell towers · 1826 to 1874

Tower at the Lake's Horizon

Big tree, far tower, scratched glass

1871, cliché-verre: a great tree in the foreground, scratched in dense looping lines, and a tower far off on the lake's horizon as a few straight scratches. The Towers idea in Corot's loosest medium, late in his life.

Difficulty
Time
about 1.5 h
You draw with
scratchboard and stylus, or 4B tone and a precision eraser
Aerial perspectiveTexture lives at the edgeFigures for scale

Why this one

  • Near tree dense, far tower sparse: aerial perspective in scratched line.
  • Straight marks for the building against loops for the tree, again.

From your kit

The whole kit →
  1. 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.
  2. 2Kneaded eraser (warm it) and the clean Mono Zero press-and-lift corrections only; the Mono Zero for a single sharp light.
  3. 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
Aerial perspective tutorialWindy Lampson · Five hills, five values, in graphite.

The plan

3 stages · ~65 min
  1. 1

    Tree in loops

    40 min

    Dense looping scratches for the tree, opening at the edges.

    Checklist0 / 1
  2. 2

    Tower in straights

    15 min

    A few ghosted straight scratches on the horizon. Then the figure.

    Checklist0 / 1
  3. 3

    Invert and box

    10 min

    Invert, compare, box.

    Checklist0 / 1

What it should look like

  • A busy near tree and a quiet far tower, in white line.

Where it goes wrong

  • Tower scratched as densely as the tree. Momentum. Stop. Four strokes.

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.

00:00of ~90 min

Status

How did it go?

Up nextThe Lonely Tower

Before this, ideally

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