Metalpoint Art

How Pale Silverpoint and Metalpoint Drawings Really Are?

A silverpoint drawing by Leonardo da Vinci
A silverpoint drawing by Leonardo da Vinci.

Looking at online images of silverpoint or metalpoint drawings, you will probably notice that many of them look very light and pale. Is this the norm? Why are they so light? And most importantly—how comes that only some metalpoint drawings look so pale while others appear much darker? Different computer monitors display images differently, thus you cannot be certain whether some artwork appears on your monitor the way it was intended to look like by the artist who scanned/photographed their work. Moreover, with image editing software like Photoshop, it is possible to alter how light or dark some digital image looks like. So how do these drawing actually look like in real life?

Metalpoint Drawing Tutorial: A Step by Step Guide to How I Made the “Snarling Wolf Tribal” Artwork

Wolf Drawing in Metalpoint

This tutorial is going to be a step by step guide in which I explain how I made my “Snarling Wolf Tribal” metalpoint drawing. This drawing was made with 24 karat gold, palladium, and aluminum, but the same instructions would be applicable also for making a silverpoint drawing (the word “silverpoint” is used when a drawing is made with silver).

Silverpoint Art Beyond Silver: What Other Metals Artists Can Use For their Metalpoint Drawings

Various Metals in Metalpoint Art

Silver is the most commonly used metal for creating metalpoint art. Even when discussing this art technique, the word “silverpoint” is used more commonly than “metalpoint.” Nonetheless, there are multiple other nice metals for silverpoint and metalpoint art that an artist can use instead of silver. This is going to be a guide to various metal options that are available for the metalpoint artist. In addition to silver, artists can use also other metals like copper, brass, bronze, aluminum, zinc, bismuth, nickel, tin, gold, platinum, palladium, or even harder metals like titanium or niobium.

Review and Comparison: Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground versus Roberson Silverpoint Drawing Ground

Golden vs. Roberson Silverpoint Drawing Ground Comparsion

Silverpoint (or metalpoint in general) is a somewhat rarely used art technique, therefore only a few companies offer ready-made art materials for this technique. In this article I am going to review and compare two ready-made silverpoint grounds: Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground versus C. Roberson & Co Silverpoint Drawing Ground. Both of these drawing grounds are acrylic based, but they use different abrasive powders, hence the differences between them are very pronounced.