The practice of the drawn house

A house portrait is a small genre with a long memory. Before the photograph was cheap, a family that wanted its house kept hired a painter or a sign writer; after the photograph, the same families sent a snapshot to an illustrator and got back a drawing. The Drawn House is an independent notebook about that genre: how the portrait is commissioned, how the line is made, what the paper carries, and which houses are worth the ink.

What the board keeps

The notebook is ruled in four boards. The Commission reads the order: the photograph the artist works from, the list of things the pen removes, the sizes a portrait comes in. The Line watches the craft: pen and ink, the elevation and the portrait, cross-hatched shade, the wash. The Sheet opens the paper drawer: stock, mats, frames, prints and the small printed goods a drawing becomes. The Record looks at the houses themselves: which homes get drawn, the row houses and the landmarks, and what a portrait records.

What the board is not

This notebook sells nothing and takes no commissions. It describes a practice the way the practice deserves: with the sizes named, the papers weighed and the reasons given. Where a studio once worked this trade, and several did it well, the notebook borrows the shape of their order books without borrowing their drawings.

How to read a sheet

Each entry carries a plate number in the margin: Nos 100 to 199 sit on the commission board, 200 to 299 on the line, 300 to 399 on the sheet, 400 and after on the record. Under the title the signature line says who set the entry down, who checked it, and how long it runs. The margin of an article holds the sheet in order and the sources it was checked against.