Can you do silverpoint drawing digitally?
Easel by Zaweba includes silverpoint, which needs a prepared ground like the real thing and tarnishes over time with the Age the picture tool.
Digital silverpoint is possible in Easel by Zaweba, a free natural-media painting studio for Windows, which includes silverpoint as one of its dry media, and like real silverpoint it needs a ground to draw on and tarnishes with age. There is a silverpoint preset among the 28 built in, and the Age the picture tool lets you see the warm tarnish that develops over time.
Silverpoint is one of the oldest drawing methods. A stylus with a silver tip is drawn over a surface that has been coated with a slightly abrasive ground, and tiny particles of metal rub off to leave a fine, pale grey line. It cannot be erased easily, it builds tone slowly, and over months the silver tarnishes to a warm brownish tone. Renaissance artists used it for careful studies, and it still has a devoted following.
Why the ground matters
Silverpoint will not mark ordinary paper. The surface needs a ground with some tooth to scrape the metal off. Easel follows that rule: silverpoint needs a ground. In practice that means choosing or preparing a suitable surface before you start. Gesso is among the paints added in version 1.1, and gessoed panel and clay board are among the surfaces, the kind of prepared supports silverpoint has traditionally been drawn on.
Drawing with it
The line is fine and light. You build tone by hatching, laying lines side by side and crossing them, rather than by pressing harder. That is very different from graphite, where pressure gives darker marks quickly. Easel's pressure control sets how deep the tip reaches into the grain as well as how much it lays down, and it reads pen pressure from a tablet if you have one, so a gentle touch still matters.
Plan the drawing. Real silverpoint is hard to correct, so artists work from light to dark and commit slowly. Easel gives you undo, 80 steps by default, which takes away the fear, but the habit of planning still gives better drawings. A tracing paper or acetate sheet over the picture can hold guides that never merge into the drawing, and a reference photo can sit beside the canvas.
Ageing the picture
The Age the picture tool simulates what time does to materials. Oil and varnish yellow, fugitive colours fade, newsprint browns, old oil cracks and silverpoint tarnishes. For silverpoint, that tarnish is part of the appeal, since a fresh drawing is cool grey and an old one is warmer. Ageing lets you see both versions of the same drawing.
Pairing silverpoint with other media
Silverpoint studies were often heightened with white. Easel has white charcoal and chalk among its dry media, and toned papers in version 1.1, so you can work a silverpoint drawing on a toned ground and pick out highlights. Wash can be added too, though remember that a wet medium over a drawing behaves according to its own rules.
Who digital silverpoint is for
Silverpoint is a niche technique, and a digital version is useful mainly for learning: getting used to hatching, the slow build of tone and the discipline of light lines. It is also a good way to explore the look before preparing a real panel, which takes time. Easel runs offline, needs no account and costs nothing, so trying it is easy.
When you are done, save as .zeasel to keep the drawing for later, or export to PNG, JPEG or TIFF at 1x or 2x.
