My rendering of Bargue’s Plate No. 7
After going to the open studio at Studio Incamminati several times, and speaking to a few of the artists there who were full-time students at the school, I decided to take one of the evening classes called Introduction to Pencil Drawing, taught by Katya Held. Even though I’ve been watching videos, getting tips and recommendations from numerous artists, and learning through trial and error, I thought it would be best to go back to the beginning with an “intro” course, to correct any mistakes I may have picked up, and to get a firm grasp of the basics.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Studio Incamminati teaches the Atelier method, focusing on mastery of skills needed for realistic drawing and painting. The full-time program is an intense, rigorous course of study, spanning 4 to 6 years. The goal of this intro course is to briefly experiment with the various techniques of realistic drawing, and to primarily develop the eye and how to abstract a subject using the Bargue Method of Drawing.
The Bargue Method was developed by Charles Bargue (1826–1883) in collaboration with the great academic artist Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904). Bargue developed a series of instructional plates or illustrations, and through the process of copying these plates, students improve their observational skills, learning how to deconstruct complex visual information into large and small forms and shadows and lights.
My rendering of Bargue’s Plate No. 5
After a demonstration by Ms Held at tonight’s first class, each student stood at their own easel with a copy of one of the plates pinned to the wall in front of us. I was assigned plate No. 7, a drawing of a foot sculpture, or cast, mounted on a small base. The plate has two versions of the foot, one drawing with just lines and another with shadows and more refined details blocked into it. The goal was to copy just the line version of the foot, using only straight lines as much as possible. I feel like my first attempt wasn’t bad.
We used only a 2H pencil, which is a harder graphite, making lighter marks on the paper that are much easier to erase. I was able to correct mistakes much more easily using a kneaded eraser. During Ms Held’s demonstration, she alternated back and forth between the pencil and the eraser quite frequently, so it was reassuring when I had to erase frequently that it wasn’t something which indicated a lack of skill or talent. Ms Held did help a lot with corrections that needed to be made, so my final product is a combination of my own work and her fixes, but all-in-all, a pretty successful first attempt.
With a little time left at the end of the class, we moved on to a 2nd plate – I was given Plat No. 5, which was another study of a foot cast, but from a profile angle. With this plate, I jumped into trying to add details much too quickly. When Ms Held came to my easel, she was encouraging me to spend more time trying to get the proportion, height-to-width ratio, and angle of the lines correct. I think I got a little too anxious after my first attempt, but I already know my biggest struggle is going to be withholding the gratification of trying to achieve a “finished product” and concentrating on just mastering the basics of lines and angles.
Bargue’s Plate No. 7
Bargue’s Plate No. 5
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