My First Silverpoint Drawings

 

I wasn't planning on sharing these drawings on the blog because they're my first attempts at drawing with silverpoint.  But I decided to anyway.  At the top of the paper, I drew circles for a value scale.  THat's what silverpoint is all about: value.  Value is basically how light or dark a color is on a scale from white to black.  The only way to darken silverpoint is to add more silver, so the darkest circle was much more time consuming than the lightest.

Many artist believe that value is the most important of the seven elements of art.  It can definitely set the mood of a painting, and I am obsessed with chiaroscuro paintings.  Chiaroscuro is an Italian phrase that roughly translates "light and dark."   This technique is seen in paintings with very light paint touching extremely dark areas of the composition.  Value has always been a challenge to me, so silverpoint will help me become a better artist.  (I hope.)

I draw this in the fall, and I had a few pumpkins about the house.  The darker one was orange, the striped one white with a paler orange color, and the pale one was a white orange.  I didn't spend much time with proximity shadows, but that's ok....they are a bit floaty along with the spheres at the top of the page.

You can barely see my Caran d'Ache Sketcher Non-Photo Blue Pencil on the pumpkins.  Not so non-photo, but these photos are super-sized! 

The stems were a lot of fun because they were dark, and it's challenging to build-up the darker color.  Another fun thing about these pumpkin drawings is the lighting: I had a nice light shining on them, so I had a few lighter highlights on the darker pumpkin.

I wish you could see how shiny these little pumpkins truly are.  I'm finding it hard to capture the beauty of the medium with my camera.  I'll keep working on it, though!

Until next time...

Blessings!
Ricki Jill