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| Coastal Pine Katherine Kean 3 x 3 inches silverpoint |
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| Coastal Pine Katherine Kean 3 x 3 inches silverpoint, aged one month |
I have been wanting to try drawing with silverpoint for ages. An artist friend suggested it to me years ago. I have a light touch, which serves me well in watercolor and oils, but for which I must compensate by using very soft pencils. With metalpoint drawings it doesn't matter so much how hard one bears down - the mark will be about the same.
I decided to try it out with a tiny drawing of very familiar subject matter.
All the marks one makes in silverpoint are indelible. There is no erasing. Metalpoint drawings are ethereal at first and darken with age as they oxidize. You can see a slight difference in the early drawing above, compared to the same drawing photographed again about a month later.
A quality I like about metalpoint is that one piece of metal lasts a long time and I don't find myself taking trip after trip to the sharpener. Without a stylus, metal to work with can be found in the silverware drawer or coin pocket. I also like that the finished surface has a silvery sheen when the light hits it. Silverpoint is difficult to photograph - the scans here are blurry from the light bouncing around, and the drawings look better in person, which I think is true for much, if not all artwork.
2 comments:
wowza!!!! I didn't quite get it so I went to Youtube and watch a short video by Gordon Hanley about it...that is SOO awesome!! I would love to try that in gold!!!
Me too, Kathryn, after I have enough practice to justify the cost.
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