Silverpoint

Sketches: The Hotel de Ville, Tours and a Girl Playing

Sketches: The Hotel de Ville, Tours and a Girl Playing (recto); Stork (verso), Daubigny, 1837/78
Art Institute of Chicago

Daubigny, Sketches: The Hotel de Ville, Tours and a Girl Playing (recto); Stork (verso), 1837/78. Graphite (recto and verso) on ivory wove paper.

The Art Institute of Chicago · The Charles Deering Collection

Plate copyLine

Sketches: The Hotel de Ville, Tours and a Girl Playing

Daubigny, 1837/78: a plate copy from graphite

Sketches: The Hotel de Ville, Tours and a Girl Playing (recto); Stork (verso), 1837/78: Graphite (recto and verso) on ivory wove paper, 12.5 × 19.9 cm (4 15/16 × 7 7/8 in.) (The Art Institute of Chicago). A plate copy: the standard protocol for graphite applied to this one sheet at the size of your book, with Daubigny's own habits as the checklist. Where is the horizon? Measure it against the height of the sheet.

Difficulty
Time
about 2 h
You draw with
H, HB, 2B graphite
Envelope, masses, detailComparative measurementLine weightThe broken lineTone from lineEye levelOne-point perspectiveMasonry coursing

Why this one

  • The low horizon and the big sky, with the trees as a screen against it.
  • Water laid in long horizontals, trees in short verticals.
  • Daubigny's cliche-verre: scratch through a dark ground and let the light draw.

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 the sketchbook
  • 2H and H with long points
  • HB and 2B for accents
  • Kneaded eraser
  • Precision eraser

Watch first

All videos →

Corot drew his late figures from memory of the pose. Proko shows the drill: look, close the book, draw the gesture, compare.

YouTube
Cotman in Normandy: curator's lectureDulwich Picture Gallery · Timothy Wilcox on the Normandy tours and the Architectural Antiquities etchings. The architectural half of this course, explained by its curator.Sketch like an architect: techniques and tips from a real project30X40 Design Workshop · Line weight hierarchy and when to stop, from an architect.

The plan

5 stages · ~100 min
  1. 1

    Read the plate first

    5 min

    Before any mark, look at Sketches: The Hotel de Ville, Tours and a Girl Playing for five minutes with the pencil down. Find the eye level or the horizon. Find the lightest light and the darkest dark and notice whether they touch. Count the big shapes: it is rarely more than four. Say what the picture is about in one sentence.

    Checklist0 / 3
  2. 2

    Envelope and masses

    15 min

    Measure the sheet's proportion and draw the envelope lightly at the size you will work. Place the horizon as a fraction of the height. Block the three or four big shapes as pale outlines, checking each against the others with the pencil held at arm's length. No detail yet; if a line is inside a shape, it is too early.

    TipBeginners rush this stage. Masters spend half the drawing here.

    Checklist0 / 3
  3. 3

    The line, once

    40 min

    With the H and then the HB, draw the contours over the envelope, each line once, from the shoulder. Follow the original's economy: where it stops drawing, you stop. Where its line breaks, break yours. Keep the sky and the lit planes as untouched paper.

    Decide the three darkest accents before you make them, and make them with the 2B last.

    Checklist0 / 3
  4. 4

    Tone from line

    30 min

    Where the original has tone, build it as the original does: parallel lines whose spacing is the value, following the plane. Squint at both sheets together and match the three values, not the detail.

    Checklist0 / 2
  5. 5

    Compare and note

    10 min

    Side by side with the original: where did you add what was not there? Where did you darken what was light? Write one sentence on the sheet about what to change next time. Date it. Box it.

    Checklist0 / 2

What it should look like

  • A pale, exact drawing with more paper than pencil.
  • Lines that can be counted, each one meaning something.
  • Three values, with the darks saved for the end.

Where it goes wrong

  • Everything the same weight. A single pressure flattens the space. Three weights: ghost for construction, firm for contour, heavy for the three accents.
  • Shading creeps in early. Tone is comforting and hides a bad contour. No tone until the line is finished and checked.

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 nextApple Trees at Auvers

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