Silverpoint

Demolition of Old Houses in Paris

Demolition of Old Houses in Paris, Lalanne, 1862
Cleveland Museum of Art

Lalanne, Demolition of Old Houses in Paris, 1862. etching.

Pins mark where to look before you draw.

The Cleveland Museum of Art · Gift of Frederick Keppel and Co., Inc., The Frederick Keppel Memorial

Master studyLine

Demolition of Old Houses in Paris

Party walls, rubble and a city block as three planes

Haussmann's Paris being torn down, 1862: a row of houses with their party walls exposed, chimney breasts and wallpaper hanging in the air, a hill of rubble in the foreground. Lalanne builds the block from a few planes and hangs the chaos on them with hatching that always follows the plane it sits on.

In pencilAn etched line is a drawn line. Copy it with hard grades and long points: tone from the spacing and direction of lines, cross-hatching only in the darkest third, no smudging anywhere.

Difficulty
Time
about 3 h
You draw with
H, HB and 2B graphite
Eye levelConvergence without the vanishing pointTone from lineTexture lives at the edgeGrouping values

Why this one

  • A city block as geometry first, chaos second.
  • Hatching that changes direction with every plane: the Lalanne signature.
  • Rubble as a mass with a texture, not a pile of drawn stones.

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 →

Cross-hatching taught as a value system, which is how the etchers used it.

YouTube
Learn to draw buildings using two-point perspective, narrated for beginnersCircle Line Art School · The corner view, built slowly.Printmaking process: intaglioMinneapolis Institute of Art · Four minutes that make every etching in this catalogue legible: ground, needle, acid, ink, wipe, press.

The plan

4 stages · ~130 min
  1. 1

    Eye level and planes

    20 min

    Find the low eye level. Envelope the block, then divide it into its planes: street fronts, party walls, roofs. Mark the direction each plane faces.

    Eye level: a standing viewer, the horizon line at the height of their eye, with things above it showing their undersides and things below showing their topsEYE LEVEL = HORIZONabove eye level:you see its undersidebelow eye level:you see its topstraddles: no top, no undersideSit down and the horizon drops. Climb a hill and it rises. It is always exactly atyour eye.Draw the eye-level line first on every architectural page. Faintly. Everything hangs from it.
    FigureLow eye level: you look up.
    Checklist0 / 2
  2. 2

    Structure

    40 min

    H: the planes as converging rectangles, chimney breasts as vertical strips, window voids as rectangles. Keep the party walls as flat shapes; do not draw wallpaper yet.

    Estimating convergence when the vanishing point is off the page: measure the near and far heights, divide both into the same number of parts, and connect the matching marksnear edge, 4 partsfar edge, 4partswindow heads, string courses, sills: all sit on these linesSight the top edge and bottom edge with the pencil (the real angles). Everythingbetween is interpolated.You never need the vanishing point. You need two true edges and a ruler for the rest.
    FigureConverging to a point off the sheet.
    Checklist0 / 3
  3. 3

    Hatching by plane

    60 min

    HB: each plane hatched in its own direction, spacing set by its value: street fronts closest, party walls widest. 2B: the window voids and the rubble's base. Texture only at the rubble's top edge and where wallpaper hangs.

    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 lives at the edge of a mass.
    Checklist0 / 3
  4. 4

    Compare

    10 min

    Note which planes read and which fused. Date, box.

    Checklist0 / 2

What it should look like

  • A block of houses you could walk around, torn open.
  • Hatching that tells you which way each wall faces.
  • Rubble as one dark mass.

Where it goes wrong

  • All hatching one direction. Habit of the hand. Turn the sheet for each plane. Lalanne did.

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 ~180 min

Status

How did it go?

Up nextA Street in Rouen

Before this, ideally

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