Silverpoint

Tree and Rocks in the Forest of Fontainebleau

Tree and Rocks in the Forest of Fontainebleau, Bléry, 1834
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bléry, Tree and Rocks in the Forest of Fontainebleau, 1834. Graphite.

Pins mark where to look before you draw.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Rogers Fund, 1961

Master studyLine + Mass

Tree and Rocks in the Forest of Fontainebleau

A single oak in pencil: canopy as mass, trunk as structure, rock as ground

An 1834 graphite drawing of one oak on a rocky rise, the canopy drawn as a soft mass, the trunk and the rocks beneath it drawn hard. The pencil version of everything Bléry etched, and the gentlest way into drawing a tree whole.

Difficulty
Time
about 2 h
You draw with
H, HB, 2B graphite
Building a tree from massesBranch logicHard, soft and lost edgesThe receding groundLight on form

Why this one

  • Soft canopy, hard trunk: two handlings in one tree.
  • A rock as the base that stops the tree floating.
  • Pencil tone built from short strokes that follow the clumps.

From your kit

The whole kit →
  1. 1Grafwood H, HB, 2B H, HB for layout and line; 2B for the darks. Long points from the Blackwing on everything up to B.
  2. 2Kneaded eraser and the 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
  • Drawing pad or smooth cartridge
  • 2H and H with long points
  • HB for accents
  • Kneaded eraser
  • Sandpaper block

Watch first

All videos →

Trees as masses in graphite, with the edge texture where it belongs.

YouTube
How to draw landscapes, trees, foliage: graphite pencil drawing tipsSmoothie77 · Clump construction and sky holes.

The plan

4 stages · ~105 min
  1. 1

    Mass and base

    15 min

    H: the canopy as one soft shape, the trunk as a line, the rock as a block under it. Check the canopy's width against the trunk's height.

    Four stages of a tree: the whole silhouette, then three to five big clumps, then a light side and shadow side on each clump, then leaf texture only along edges1 · SILHOUETTE2 · CLUMPS3 · LIGHT/SHADOW4 · EDGE MARKSEach clump is a sphere with its own light side, shadow side and cast shadow onto theclump below.Never draw a leaf. Draw masses that catch light, then let the edges say "leaves".
    FigureMass, trunk, ground.
    Checklist0 / 3
  2. 2

    Canopy as soft tone

    40 min

    HB, short strokes following the clumps: the canopy's tone, lit at the top (sparse) and dark beneath (dense). Its edge broken into clump shapes, never a single outline.

    A single foliage clump whose interior is flat tone and whose outer edge carries all the leaf texture, with a zoom showing the scribbled edge markszoom: broken, varied,pointing outwardThe eye reads texture at edges and assumes it continues inside. Give it the edge andnothing else.Interior texture flattens the form and kills the light. Trust the edge.
    FigureTexture at the edge.
    Checklist0 / 3
  3. 3

    Trunk hard, rock in light

    40 min

    2B: the trunk and main limbs as hard dark lines diving into the soft mass; the rock's shadow side; the ground's few strokes. Keep the trunk the only crisp thing.

    Corot's branch logic: a trunk that tapers, branches that change direction at every fork in a zig-zag, and limbs that disappear into the foliage clumps instead of ending in airWRONG · LOLLIPOP, ENDS IN AIRsame width top to bottom, straight limbsRIGHT · TAPERS, ZIG-ZAGS, DIVES INchangesdirection atevery forkvanishes into the massWork from the ground UP, the way the tree grew. Each fork: thinner, and a newdirection.Corot drew the branches zig-zagging upward and disappearing into the leaves. Not one of them ends in open air.
    FigureInto the mass, not on it.
    Checklist0 / 3
  4. 4

    Compare

    10 min

    Note, date, box.

    Checklist0 / 2

What it should look like

  • A soft tree on a hard rock.
  • A trunk that disappears into leaves.
  • No outline around the canopy.

Where it goes wrong

  • An outlined canopy. Habit. The edge is where the strokes stop. Let them stop raggedly.

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 ~120 min

Status

How did it go?

Up nextA Byzantine column capital

Before this, ideally

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