My drawing of Bargue Plate No. 32
I know this is only a 10-week course, but jumping from Bargue Plates numbers 5 and 7 last week to number 32 this week scared me a little. Plus, it was one of my most feared subjects to draw – the face. This one took the entire 3-hour class, and for good reason; the slope of the top of the head, the angle of the forehead to the tip or the nose and back toward the chin, the height-to-width ratio, the shadow lines, collar height, and on and on. It may not look like much, but that’s the misconception of this method – it may just look like simple lines, bordering on stick figures, but there is a lot to think about when replicating these plates.
The use of the plum lines (the guide lines that aren’t part of the face or subject) are useful to determine scale and proportion since we are rendering the drawing larger than it appears on the plate. Even so, by the time we had to stop, I can still see imperfections in the angle at the bottom of the collar, the mustache on my drawing looks too big, the mass of the shadow is too wide, and other things. I do feel it’s not bad for only my 2nd class, but much more practice is obviously needed.
Bargue Plate No. 32
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