Let's have a thread where we can share our progress of doing Bargue plates, starting with the first one!
How to "Charles Bargue" plates?
I'm having difficulty at doing the first eye of the first plate of this exercise. I even borrowed an easel and all to do this and I couldn't even set the grid properly. The lines just come out wriggly. Am I going too fast? Is the overhand grip the right one for doing these exercises?
Am I doing it right?
>>2390659
resize your images god dammit
>the lines just come out wriggly
use a ruler, draw the grid first. It's there to help you sight and measure.
>>2390541
>>2390541
All Bargue drawings are ment to be drawn using exclusively straight lines. These are just introduction drawings with slightly curved lines and don't entirely represent the process to the later Bargue Plates. The minor curvature is a more advanced principal in blocking-in a subject where you try to capture the "essence" of what you're drawing with very subtlety curved straight lines.
Don't worry about making the lines in one go. Work lightly and build up your lines. Once you have a very accurate block in with light lines, you can go over them and make more confidant lines to properly represent the Bargue drawing. Also, consider the quality of the lines with their width, value and tapering at the ends.
I'd suggest starting with something a little more advanced, I'm not talking about the belvedere torso here but just something where you have line, shadow shape and maybe just a little mid-tones. Most students spend something like 60 hours on
The overhand grip isn't really appropriate for these drawings (unless you're doing the final tiny angle breaks on one of the "finished" drawings). The classical approach to holding the pencil is to basically hold it lightly at the very end with your thumb, index and middle fingers. Any combination of this tends to work out. At times you may want to use your pinky finger to steady your hand again the drawing board when working. Also, it should be noted that this is for drawing on a vertical surface.
Also, this was my second pencil Bargue at The Florence Academy of Art. Now the image was taken a week before I finished it and my phone camera sucks but you get the idea ;)
Lastly, if you need any help with the Bargue Drawing Course, reply in the thread and I'll do my best to help out :)
>>2390771
Is the Bargue course appropriate for a complete noob to go through as well?
>>2390808
Um, sort of. To get the most out if the course you'd need frequent critiques throughout the drawing. I got something like a critique every 3 hours working on it but most people don't have that as an option :/ Doing it yourself you might not always be able to fully explore the potential of these drawings but I still think you can learn from them. It does take a lot of thinking to really learn from Bargue drawings and it can be tricky some people to get into that mode of working. I don't necessarily think that there should be an certain skill level needed to learn from them, only that with classical training you'd probably have a better idea of what you're doing.
Hell, if there are a lot of people doing this, I can probably help out by explaining the process, a few key concepts and give some critiques through a livestream or hangout (I'm too lazy to type these things -.-').
>>2390808
id focus on drawing only first, if you want to improve fast
i did them for a while but i wasn't getting the value for the time i was putting in. you are better off just drawing from life.
>>2390861
"you are better off just drawing from life." - Triggered.
Bargue drawings are aids to drawing from life. They are heavily edited and this serves as a guide for the student to learn how to simplify/edit complex subjects and represent them in a proper manner. They are ment to be drawn exactly students always spend several weeks on them to train their eyes and hands to be very very accurate.
The entire course is setup so you should work on your Bargue drawings half o the time and the other half should be spent drawing the model from life. They compliment each other and tend to be done back to back (usually 3 hours of one and then 3 hours of the other).
Doing them in Ink is not the proper medium. I'd consider pencil and charcoal to be the only appropriate medium for barge drawings. Anything else and you won't be able to accurately represent them.
>>2390861
>
Those Bargues are a fucking disgrace. My art teachers at the atelier would tear you a new asshole because that's NOT how you do them. The point of doing Bargues is to aim for sub millimeter precision. You essentially aim to create a perfect copy and spend somewhere along 20-30 hours on each drawing. Nothing wrong doing ink sketches, but don't think you are doing Bargues.
>>2391010
im not spending 20 hours on a bargue plate
there's nothing wrong with doing them en masse.
your art teachers at the atelier need to get their heads out of their asses.
>>2391021
Get the hell out of this thread then. You'll learn just as much doing quick sketches from magazine pictures if you're treating the Bargue plates as a loosey goosey warm up exercise. Also by judging the quality of your ink drawings you are in no place to give out advice on how to practice.
>>2390861
you are a cancer to this board and art in general.
The instructions recommend having the plate and your paper side by side, drawing in the exact same size as the plate, but also say to blow up the more detailled plates before copying them; wouldn't it be better to have the plates at odd angles and varying positions compared to your paper and to draw to varying scales? Basically like what drawing from life will be like. Any opinions on this?
>>2390849
What's there to critique? Isn't the goal to create a perfect copy of the plates? Even an absolute beginner should be able to judge if two drawings are the same.
>>2391082
>muh plates
>>2390771
OP here, thank you for the advice!
Please don't mind the haters and the shitposters, more help and critiques are always welcome!! I think that ic could become a great place to learn if everyone put their all into it and gave helpful advice like you!
Drawing vertically is very hard. I only had this easel since yesterday. It took me over two hours for each of these eyes. I know they're not really good... but I get burned out doing these easily and have to rest every 45 minutes. Should I move to the next eye or should I fix the previous ones? I fear that if I kept fixing the old eyes, I might come to hate drawing due to grinding the same thing over and over again.
I'm a very low tier beginner who had just finished reading Keys to Drawing and halfway onto Perspective made easy. I've brought How to Draw by Robertson and only finished the first chapter so far. I also watch Proko. But I found out that ever since I started doing Bargue Plates it's been harder to allocate my time for other studies!
Let's say I have 4 hours of free time per day that can be allocated for drawing. What is the best way to optimise it?
For today it was: Bargue=4 hours.
But I fear that if I don't work on perspective and anatomy I might forget it! Should I do less Bargue and put more time on doing perspective and Proko exercises?
I really don't want this thread to die out. I've been posting questions in the question thread but they always get buried quickly. Also since Bargue really works, I hope more beginners like me should give it a try!
Bargue plates are good, but I didn't find them all that useful. That, or maybe they did help me and I didn't notice.
A technique used at one of my art schools to create proper proportion was a tracing method. Towards the back of the book, there's drawn models. Basically, you would trace the model EXACTLY the way the plate was drawing, even all the little scratches and stuff. Then, keep the trace and actual image side by side, and then free hand the actual drawing while looking at both.
It was kind of neat, something to look at. I would "gift wrap" my trace version to help my proportions, and the teacher was cool with it.
do Bargue plates only help you if you want to copy? What exactly do they help with?
>>2391588
they where originally designed as a prelude to cast and life drawing. their goal was to form the taste in art of student and build some solid foundation in academic drawing.
in my opinion, today they are best used coupled with an anatomy book. they are also really helpful to analyses classical works (especially french academic work).
>>2391959
The book choices some really interesting simplified methods to help convey the message. The way the hands are drawn in some of the models is really well done in that aspect. I see that type of simplification in a lot of animations, so it seems to work.
