Learning to See

Inspiration and practical advice for aspiring realist artists

Bargue Drawings

Over a period of months, I worked on copies of the the first five of the Bargue plates. Doing them on my own, without guidance, was a challenge at first. But in time, I worked out how to copy them and also learned how to draw sight size in the process.

Bargue Plate 1

You can read about my initial practice with Bargue plate 1 here.bargue-1-thumb

Bargue Plate 2

bargue-2-thumbPlate 2 stretched me a little further, although I still didn’t quite understand how to do the plates properly yet.

Bargue Plate 3

bargue-3c-thumbBy the time I”d got onto plate 3 I was starting to get a better idea. I’d actually read the instructions by this time, and was beginning to figure out how one drew sight size, and why it was such an effective way to learn.

Bargue Plate 4

bargue-4-3-thumbPlate 4, the plate of ears, introduces simplified tone blocks for the first time, and represented a slight step up from the previous plate.

Bargue Plate 5

bargue5-thumbBy the time I’d got onto plate 5, I was starting to find my feet. Pun intended 🙂 For this plate, I’ve done a full write up of the process I followed over a number of blog posts.

Taken together, they are a Bargue drawing tutorial that will also teach you how to approach sight size copies when working fro a flat original. The same process, with some amendments, can be used when working sight size from life.