Bargue Exercises - an ongoing experience

[Ngaire Winwood]

Hi all, I have the Bargue Drawing Course book and thought it would be a good idea to share my learning experience with this type of training with forum members.

I started out pretty frustrated doing the exercises as I used no measuring, only eyeing in the lines and compare, compare, compare and realised that my skills weren't up to scratch to place a line correctly the first time around. After doing one line first drawn only drawings with 100 samples of exercise 1 - Plate 1 with 20-50% accuracy, I skipped the rest of this plate and moved on to a tonal drawing plate to try my skills at, namely Plate 14. I also nearly completed Plate 60, but added to it to make it more life like, see below. I then realised I don't have an even quality with my shading, so with this realisation of both counts of having insufficient skills, I decided there is only one way to do them and that is to do them one at a time as they were intended and planned in the course and just hope I progress. I started afresh and took the course more seriously with a new level of dedication and started at the beginning on Plate 1 and will work on from here, fingers crossed.

My method I used was firstly, I went to a local printing company and increased the size of the plates to A3 first and then put the original on the left of my working copy that are then both attached to a drawing board by sticky tape on a vertical easel. I used H and 2B graphite pencils and a rubber when allowed for Plate 1.

Here is Plate 1 completed with minimal corrections (meaning a slight angle change here and there) eyeing in with no measuring, eye only. Generally lines were placed 80-90% of the time first stroke without corrections which I heard was the best way to do this course (that is via the academic teaching method). I am allowing a 5% leeway for being a beginner as doing the lessons this way is really hardwork as I would like to see a progression to the next exercises without too much delay from inaccuracies. I am also working on a vertical easel and my arm and shoulder ache due to lack of experience working in this way (that I hope will get stronger each day that will allow me to stay at my easel longer). I used the H pencil first to place lines in and stood back and checked it against the original, if I was satisfied, I then did these same lines in a 2B over the top and stood back and compared and moved onto the next exercise.

I am hoping the plates will get easier as I gain more experience. There might be better methods to go about doing this course that will allow me to get maximum effects and I am hoping someone might shed some light for me, if any one has any suggestions, I would appreciate it.

I have put the original first and my working copy following.

I haven't figured out yet how to place the original next to the working copy so please be patient with my inexperience.