Silverpoint

Silverpoint is a drawing technique using a thin wire or stylus tipped with silver, drawn across a specially prepared ground, most often a paper or panel coated with a mixture of ground bone dust and an adhesive binder, which is slightly abrasive enough to leave a fine trace of metal behind, since silver alone will not leave a visible mark on ordinary paper. The resulting line is pale gray at first and cannot be erased or corrected, demanding a confident, deliberate hand from the artist, but it slowly tarnishes to a warm brown over time as the deposited silver oxidizes. The technique was a standard tool for preparatory drawing and study from the late medieval period through the Renaissance, used by artists including Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer, before it was largely displaced by graphite and chalk, which permitted the erasing and reworking silverpoint's unforgiving line could not.