Silverpoint

Spanish Chestnut

Spanish Chestnut, Ruskin, n.d.
Art Institute of Chicago

Ruskin, Spanish Chestnut, n.d.. Pen and brown ink, with brush and watercolor, over graphite, on ivory wove card.

The Art Institute of Chicago · Gift of Mrs. Chauncey McCormick

Plate copyLine + Mass

Spanish Chestnut

Ruskin: a plate copy from pencil and wash

Spanish Chestnut: Pen and brown ink, with brush and watercolor, over graphite, on ivory wove card, 24 × 30.1 cm (9 1/2 × 11 7/8 in.) (The Art Institute of Chicago). A plate copy: the standard protocol for pencil and wash applied to this one sheet at the size of your book, with Ruskin's own habits as the checklist. Find the part he finished and the part he abandoned. The finished part is the subject.

In pencilA wash drawing is a line drawing with a few flat tones laid over it, usually two or three. Draw the line with the hard grades, then lay each wash as a flat, even field of graphite with the side of the lead, edges exactly where the brush stopped.

Difficulty
Time
about 2 h
You draw with
H, HB, 2B, 4B graphite
An even field of toneGrouping valuesNotan: two, three, four valuesLine weightWater as a mirrorThe receding ground

Why this one

  • Draw the fragment. One capital, one bough, one course of stones, all the way to understanding.
  • Shading as a slow, even skin laid with a fine point, never a smudge.
  • Look longer than you draw.

From your kit

The whole kit →
  1. 1Grafwood H, HB, 2B, 4B H, HB for layout and line; 2B, 4B 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, medium tooth
  • 2B, 4B, 6B with long points
  • Kneaded eraser
  • Precision eraser
  • Slip sheet

Watch first

All videos →

Timothy Wilcox on the Normandy tours and the Architectural Antiquities etchings. The architectural half of this course, explained by its curator.

YouTube
Cotman in Normandy at Dulwich Picture GalleryDulwich Picture Gallery · Ten minutes with the drawings on the wall. Watch how few values Cotman uses.Giovanni Battista Piranesi etchings: the Views (Vedute di Roma)Busy Baçi · The whole Vedute series paged through. Note how small the figures are and how large Rome becomes.

The plan

5 stages · ~95 min
  1. 1

    Read the plate first

    5 min

    Before any mark, look at Spanish Chestnut 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

    30 min

    H and HB: the drawing underneath the washes, as the original has it. Light, exact, once.

    Checklist0 / 2
  4. 4

    The washes as flat fields

    35 min

    Count the wash values in the original (usually two or three). Lay each as an even field of graphite with the side of the 2B or 4B, lightest first, with hard edges where the brush stopped and soft where it bled. A slip sheet under the hand.

    Checklist0 / 3
  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 clear line drawing with two or three flat tones over it.
  • Fields with no hatching visible.

Where it goes wrong

  • Streaky fields. Pressure and tip instead of side and layers. Side of the lead, three light passes, each at a new angle.

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

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