Landscape Drawing Plates: Croquis a la Minute

Develop your quick sketching & composition landscape skills.

An important benefit for the developing artist studying these plates is the development of style which you can do by copying these plates.

The originals were black & white medium on a dark grey background so these are processed for you to practice graphite landscape sketching. For this reason note that these are not so good as value studies. For those studies the Julien & Bargue courses are recommended.

For progressive landscape studies see the "Alexandre Calame Landscape Drawing Templates: L'Etude Du Paysage" book by Burst Books.

Étienne Eugène Cicéri was a French painter, illustrator, engraver and theatrical designer. He was also the grandson of the painter Jean-Baptiste Isabey, and his mother's brother was the painter Eugène Isabey. He published albums of lithographs based on photographs thus breaking with his Romantic predecessors to present scenes realistically.

Drawing plates were widespread in France, England, and Germany and are still today used to teach this style of painting. I totally support the point of view of French art teachers of the 19th century that fine art students need to study the rich traditions of the classical art.

French schools at that time advocated the following sequence of art education:

• Drawing copies of classical art plates
• Copying drawings by the Old Masters
• Drawing classical casts - busts and figures
• Drawing live models

Much the same you can study these fine art drawing plates, progress to master landscape drawings then to sight size & plein air landscape drawing.

Digitally restored you now have the opportunity to complete this lesson in landscape drawing from a french master.