Silverpoint

How this program works

The same landscape reduced to two values, three values and four values, showing that the design is readable at two and complete at four2 VALUESThe design. If thisfails, nothing saves it.3 VALUESCorot's working number.4 VALUESFinished. More steps addpolish, not strength.Notan: the arrangement of light and dark, Japanese for "light-dark".Squint until the scene collapses to three flat shapes. Draw those first.Every lesson in the Mass unit starts here.A drawing with a good two-value design and bad details beats one with perfect details and no design.
FigureNotan: two, three, four values
FoundationLine + Mass

How this program works

A session format, a box of drawings, and the twenty-minute rule

Understand the shape of every session, set up the box that will hold your evidence, and make a deal with yourself about time.

Difficulty
Time
about 0.5 h
You draw with
Any pencil

Why this one

  • Unit 0 of the program: Before the First Mark.
  • A labelled box with one dated sheet in it.
  • A clear idea of what MASS and LINE mean, and that you will learn both.

From your kit

The whole kit →
  1. 1Kneaded eraser and the Mono Zero press-and-lift corrections only; the Mono Zero for a single sharp light.
  2. 2Alpha sketchbook 9 x 6 draw at the book's size and keep the proportions; date the page.
In general, this study asks for
  • Any paper
  • Any pencil
  • A box or folder for finished drawings

The plan

5 stages · ~29 min
  1. 1

    The two halves

    6 min

    This course teaches one craft with two halves. The MASS half is Corot's: squinting a landscape into three or four flat shapes of value, laying tone with the side of the pencil, building trees as clumps that catch light, and letting the air soften everything that is far away. The LINE half is the draughtsman's, the tradition Robert Smith Forrest worked in: structure first, eye level and perspective, the arch constructed, tone counted out in layers of hatching, and the broken line that draws old stone.

    You will learn both, in alternating units, because a landscape with a building in it needs both at once. The capstone of the course is exactly that: a stone ruin drawn with the draughtsman's accuracy, standing inside Corot's air.

    The same landscape reduced to two values, three values and four values, showing that the design is readable at two and complete at four2 VALUESThe design. If thisfails, nothing saves it.3 VALUESCorot's working number.4 VALUESFinished. More steps addpolish, not strength.Notan: the arrangement of light and dark, Japanese for "light-dark".Squint until the scene collapses to three flat shapes. Draw those first.Every lesson in the Mass unit starts here.A drawing with a good two-value design and bad details beats one with perfect details and no design.
    FigureThe Mass half starts here: a scene reduced to a few flat values.
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  2. 2

    The session format

    6 min

    Every session has the same shape. A warm-up (five minutes of drills that keep your hand loose). The steps (the actual work, each with a visual showing what the step should produce). What it should look like (so you know when you are done). Common failures (what goes wrong for every beginner, why, and the fix). A self-check (three to five yes-or-no questions; tick them honestly and the app records your progress). And often a master study: a real drawing by Corot, Cotman, Prout or one of the others, with notes on where to look.

    You draw on paper, by hand, the whole way. The screen is your teacher and your reference, never your canvas.

    Checklist0 / 1
  3. 3

    The twenty-minute rule

    6 min

    Twenty minutes a day beats three hours on Sunday. Drawing is a motor skill and motor skills are built by frequent short practice, exactly like an instrument. If you only have twenty minutes, do the warm-up and one step and stop. The sessions are designed so that any step is a complete piece of practice on its own.

    A session's stated duration is the full thing. Splitting it over two or three days is normal.

    Checklist0 / 1
  4. 4

    The box

    6 min

    Find a box, a folder or a drawer, and label it. Every drawing you make in this course goes in it, dated in the corner before you start. Do not throw anything away, not the bad ones, especially not the bad ones. Progress in drawing is invisible day to day and obvious month to month, and in six weeks you will need the evidence that it is happening.

    Today's task: label the box. Then write on a sheet of paper, in pencil, today's date and the words Day One. Draw anything at all beneath it, for five minutes, without judging it. Put it in the box.

    Checklist0 / 1
  5. 5

    Self-check

    5 min

    Tick each item honestly. If one is a no, the session is not finished; go back to that step.

    Checklist0 / 3

What it should look like

  • A labelled box with one dated sheet in it.
  • A clear idea of what MASS and LINE mean, and that you will learn both.

Where it goes wrong

  • Buying everything and drawing nothing. Shopping feels like progress and costs no courage. Any pencil, any paper, today. The kit lesson is tomorrow.
  • Skipping ahead to the architecture. It is the part you want, and it is built entirely on the control and seeing units. Trust the order. The architecture unit is six times easier after Seeing.

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 ~30 min

Status

How did it go?

Up nextYour kit and your set-up