Karla Walden Caraway

ABOUT SILVERPOINT

Silverpoint is a centuries-old drawing medium, used by such artists as Rembrandt, Durer, and Leonardo. Silver wire, is drawn across paper or another surface that has been specially prepared with a coating to make it abrasive enough to scrape the silver as it passes over the surface. This leaves behind a trail of actual silver, creating the lines you see on the surface.

Silverpoint may look similar at first to a pencil drawing, but there are differences. Silverpoint will not smudge, and is permanent (no erasing!), and lines drawn can be much more fine and precise.

One of its more endearing properties of silverpoint is that it is a "living" medium--it continues to change over time, as the actual silver on the paper oxidizes, or tarnishes, just like silver jewelry. With time, the lines turn darker and take on more of a sepia tone.

Usually, shaded areas are built up through layers and layers of fine crosshatching. Although is a painstaking and time-consuming medium, I find the process of drawing in silverpoint to be mesmerizing.

Other metals may be used in the same way, including gold, lead, aluminum, brass, copper, etc. "Metalpoint" is the correct term when referring to the overall category of drawing with any metals.

These images are quite small, and were drawn in a moving vehicle (I wasn't driving!) They are a collection of random sights of the roadsides, from my view out the window, and were purposefully nonpurposeful in composition.  Each drawing was completed very quickly, into my sketchbook. I like to envision these framed individually, and hung in a grid pattern together-- all about a road trip.