No 401The Record
the house, drawn · Indianapolis tradition
The Drawn House
Every house has a line worth keeping.
This site keeps the sheets of a drawing practice: how a house portrait is commissioned from a photograph, how the line is made and shaded, what paper and mat carry it, and which houses are worth the ink.
Fresh off the board
8 / 15 sheets
No 101The Commission
Commissioning a house portrait
No 302The Sheet
The mat and the frame
No 102The Commission
What the pen removes
No 201The Line
Why the house portrait stays pen and ink
No 403The Record
The record on paper
No 303The Sheet
Prints, stationery and the small goods
No 203The Line
Shade, in cross-hatching
How a sheet is made
01 · The photograph
The client sends snapshots of the house. The artist picks the angle that reads best and asks about the season, the light, and what must go.
02 · The pencil
The mass is drawn first: roof line, porch, windows in their bays. Cars, wires and sale signs never reach this sheet.
03 · The ink
The pen fixes what the pencil proposed. Shade is built in cross-hatching; the sky is left to the paper.
04 · The wash and the mail
A watercolor wash if the commission calls for it, then the sheet is matted, wrapped flat and posted to the house it shows.
Sheets 100-199
The Commission
How a house portrait is ordered: the photograph the artist works from, the list of things she removes, the sizes, and what finally arrives.
No 104The Commission
From snapshot to sheet
No 103The Commission
The sizes a portrait comes in
Sheets 200-299
The Line
The craft itself: pen and ink, cross-hatching, the wash, and the difference between an architect's elevation and a portrait.
No 202The Line
The elevation and the portrait
No 204The Line
The wash over the line
Sheets 300-399
The Sheet
What a drawing becomes: the paper that holds it, the mat and the frame, the prints and the stationery it is reproduced on.
No 301The Sheet
Paper that holds the line
No 302The Sheet
The mat and the frame
Sheets 400-499
The Record
The houses themselves: which homes get drawn, the row houses and landmarks, and why a building is worth a portrait.
No 402The Record
Row houses and landmarks
No 404The Record
Why a house is worth drawing
Every sheet on the board
15 sheets- No 401 The houses that get drawn
- No 101 Commissioning a house portrait
- No 302 The mat and the frame
- No 102 What the pen removes
- No 201 Why the house portrait stays pen and ink
- No 403 The record on paper
- No 303 Prints, stationery and the small goods
- No 203 Shade, in cross-hatching
- No 104 From snapshot to sheet
- No 103 The sizes a portrait comes in
- No 202 The elevation and the portrait
- No 204 The wash over the line
- No 301 Paper that holds the line
- No 402 Row houses and landmarks
- No 404 Why a house is worth drawing
Kept on other drawing boards
Sheets pinned by other hands on subjects this board does not cover, each one read before it was hung here.
A portrait is finished twice: once at the bench, and again where the portrait hangs in the house it shows, and the wall it keeps is worth reading about.
The same patience rules every bench: a hand, a material, and the workshop that still makes things one piece at a time.
Most portraits are commissioned at the same moment: a house passes to another family, and someone wants the place kept as it was.
The drawings people keep longest are rarely of houses alone; they are of the street that keeps its shape around them.
A portrait sheet sits well beside an old map of the same streets: one records the house, the other records where it stood.