Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Mansard Roof


Cambridge is full of old wooden houses, as I have explained in earlier posts. These edifices gave me endless opportunities to draw my favorite architectural features: porches with ornate woodworking. This house also has another favorite of mine, a mansard roof. These were built in America in the middle to later 19th century. You can find them in all older New England towns and cities. I may have drawn this black and white ink drawing entirely on site,  but I suspect I may have added to it and colorized it with watercolor when I got back to the studio. I had a lot of time to draw all those details back then. The slide film is dated 1980. The slide is poorly preserved and it is the only record I have of this piece. My neighborhoods in urban Northern Virginia don't have too many old houses like this one. Most of them were torn down and replaced with boring housing developments. 

Ink on thick paper, about 8" x 11", 1980.

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