Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground

Comments about Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground:

Having never tried Silverpoint, I was excited to give it a shot. I read the reviews and they all said as long as you mix/shake the ground enough it worked well. I put it on watercolor paper and it worked absolutely perfectly!

Comments about Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground:

Works pretty well

Comments about Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground:

I have used several bottles of Golden's Silverpoint Ground and have found it an excellent ground for silver, copper and gold. It takes the metals very well and I am able to achieve an 80 to 85% grey tone. This compares very well with cooking up rabbit skin glue mixture and it is far less smelly and very convenient. Make sure to shake the bottle very well before use (you can hear the ball inside rattle) and then let it settle for about 5 minutes to let the air bubbles come out. I use a # 50 flat nylon brush from Blick (high quality) to apply the ground to my support. Clean up is fairly easy with water. I saw one artist had trouble with the ground being tacky, maybe a bad bottle or not enough shaking before use. I highly recommend this product.

Comments about Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground:

This is a great surface for silver point. Just shake it up good.

Comments about Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground:

This product makes it easy for me to produce nice silver and gold-point pictures. It's no trouble to apply if you shake up and mix product sufficiently. I use several thin coats, drying between each coat. It provides a smooth surface to produce sharp and distinct lines with a wire or soft and wide lines with the back of a spoon. Some really dark tones can be achieved with care. This ground can easily be tinted with dry or water-based pigments. This is so much easier and much less stinky than making ones's own "traditional" ground with rabbit skin glue and cooked chicken bones.

Comments about Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground:

I've always prepared my own silverpoint ground using the traditional mixture of rabbit skin glue, marble dust and white pigment, and optional darker pigments if I needed a mid-tone. So I decided to try Golden's Silverpoint Ground. The good news: the convenience of a ready-made ground available in a squirt plastic bottle. Now the bad: Using this product is literally like brushing with Elmer's school glue. It is sticky and gooey compared with the traditional ground that I've been using. It is murder on the brush and nearly ruined one of my quality mottlers thinking that it can, as the directions say, simply "wash with soap and water.". NO. There is a gummy residue that remains. And the ground once it's brushed on remains gummy for a day or so until it finally dries but it still feels tacky afterward. So it's back to my my rabbit skin glue and whiting formula for me. It may take a bit more preparation, but at least I won't be wasting time cleaning goop of my brush or waiting forever for the first coat to dry!

Comments about Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground:

I wanted to try silverpoint, but wasn't interested in making my own grounds or buying expensive pre-made panels, so I decided to give this a try. It works amazingly well, a single coat is usually enough, and can easily be tinted for toned backgrounds. While it gives decent results on watercolor paper, I find that using it on claybord panels allows for really rich darks and good tonal range very similar to graphite. You do have to shake it hard to mix it up properly, and then pour it out and let it set about 5 min until the air bubbles disappear, so I usually prepare several panels at a time. But it's a very nice surface to draw on and easier/cheaper than most alternatives.

Comments about Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground:

I was told I should try out silverpoint and all the ways I was told to make the paper or whatever ready for it were rather expensive or time consuming. This stuff is great, I squirted some onto my canson illustration paper (it was all I had at the moment) and brushed it on with a nice painting brush from the hardware section of wally world and waited until it dried, maybe less than a half hour. It works awesome, I can't afford any silver right now so I'm actually using some white bronze (or nickel, I got it from the scrap bin) and it marks wonderfully.
Have fun drawing, I completely recommend this to anyone who lives drawing.

Comments about Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground:

This product was introduced to me at a recent workshop by a very knowledgable teacher. He demonstrated how to use it, and by doing so inspired me to get some of my own. I did, followed his instructions, and it works great. I intend to show this method to my own group of artists. I suspect this Silver Point Ground is a rarely used product by the masses, and appreciate the fact it didn't have to be 'back ordered'. Thank you for a fine product.

Comments about Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground:

A single coat did it for me. Works very well. Nice surface.