For a while now, I have been meaning to
undertake some metalpoint drawings.
To this end I procured some copper wire from
Home Depot, and some silver soldering wire from William Binnie.
Today, I visited the paper conservator at the National Gallery of Art
to talk about silverpoint, and she showed me a number of supports.
She then offered a few sheets of different prepared grounds to try out.
With these in hand, I then fashioned some electrical-taped tools
of which any prison-shank-aficionado would be proud.
The result:
Godzilla VS King Ghidorah (after Frans Post)
Here is Frans Post's original painting.
Vertical and Horizontal lines delineate different ground preparation.
The ground is bone ash and rabbit skin glue.
The right side of the page was dampened and rubbed with cheese cloth.
The middle horizontal third was burnished, and the
bottom third was sanded with pumice stone.
The dampening didn't seem to affect the surface too much,
but I found the burnished was easiest to work with.
The sky, background, and Godzilla are silverpoint.
The foreground and King Ghidorah are copperpoint.
When I was working, there was no visible difference in color
between the two, so I am interested to see how they age.
And here are the tools:
