Silverpoint

Liverpool Cathedral under scaffolding

Liverpool Cathedral, Muirhead Bone, 1913
Cleveland Museum of Art

Muirhead Bone, Liverpool Cathedral, 1913. graphite.

Pins mark where to look before you draw.

The Cleveland Museum of Art · John L. Severance Fund

Master studyLine

Liverpool Cathedral under scaffolding

A cathedral being built, in pencil, with most of the sheet left bare

A 1913 graphite drawing of Scott's cathedral rising inside its scaffold. Bone draws the finished stone densely and the scaffold as a cage of fine straight lines, and leaves two-thirds of the sheet as paper. It is the best lesson in the catalogue on finishing one passage and letting the rest go.

Difficulty
Time
about 2.5 h
You draw with
2H, H, HB graphite
Focal hierarchyLine weightMasonry coursingPlumb and levelGhosting a line

Why this one

  • Density where it matters, paper everywhere else.
  • Straight scaffold lines drawn freehand from the shoulder: a test of the Foundations.
  • The modern mess as subject: cranes and hoardings are worth drawing.

From your kit

The whole kit →
  1. 1Grafwood 2H, H, HB 2H, H, HB for layout and line. 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 →

Structure first, then tone, on a real stone building. The method of the Architecture studies in a modern hand.

YouTube
How to hold and control your pencilProko · Tripod and overhand grips, and drawing from the shoulder. Watch before Foundations session 1.How to draw realistic textures with pencils: brick and stone wallAsif Rasheed Art · Stone and brick texture; use it for the near courses only and let tone do the rest.

The plan

4 stages · ~105 min
  1. 1

    Decide the finished square

    10 min

    Before anything: which square inch of the sheet will be finished? Mark it lightly. Everything else is subordinate to it.

    A landscape where the focal point, a tower, has the strongest contrast, the sharpest edges and the only fine detail, while everything else is softer and closer in valuehere only: 1 beside 9,sharpest edge, onlydetaileverywhere else: softer edges,narrower value range, no detailThe eye goes where contrast, sharpness and detail coincide. Allow that to happen inexactly one place.Spend your darkest dark and your whitest white together, once, on purpose.
    FigureOne place finished, the rest in service of it.
    Checklist0 / 1
  2. 2

    Scaffold from the shoulder

    35 min

    2H, long point, arm straight: the scaffold as sets of parallel lines, each drawn once in one movement, ghosted first. Do not rule them. Where they cross, let them cross.

    Ghosting: the pencil rehearses the line in the air several times, then lands once, moving from the shoulderGHOSTING A STRAIGHT LINEstart dotend dotrehearse 3 to 4 times without touchingWRONG · WRIST PIVOT CURVES ITRIGHT · SHOULDER, LOCKED WRISTLook at the end dot, not the pencil point. The hand goes where the eye is.
    FigureGhost, then commit, once.
    Checklist0 / 3
  3. 3

    The finished stone

    50 min

    H and HB in the chosen passage only: masonry coursing, the doorway's shadow, the mouldings, as dense as you can make them with hard grades. Stop at the edge of the passage even though your hand wants to continue.

    Stone wall: on the left every stone is outlined and the wall looks like a net; on the right only the courses run through, a few stones are suggested near the edges and the eye, and tone carries the restWRONG · EVERY STONE DRAWNRIGHT · COURSES, STONES SUGGESTEDDraw the horizontal courses as broken lines. Add vertical joints only near openings,corners and the bottom. Let tone do the middle.Cotman's Haute Allemagne tower: hundreds of stones implied, perhaps forty actually drawn.
    FigureCourses, not bricks.
    Checklist0 / 3
  4. 4

    Compare

    10 min

    How much paper did you leave? Measure it against Bone's. Note it. Date, box.

    Checklist0 / 2

What it should look like

  • A dense passage of stone inside a cage of fine lines, on a mostly empty sheet.
  • Straight lines that are straight because your arm was, not a ruler.

Where it goes wrong

  • Filling the sheet. Empty paper feels unfinished. Bone left it. Draw a box around the finished passage if you must, and stop.
  • Ruled scaffold. Fear of a wobble. Wobbles are the drawing. Ghost each line three times, then draw it once.

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 ~150 min

Status

How did it go?

Up nextOld College Wynd, Edinburgh

Before this, ideally

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