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Bargue Drawing Tutorial Stage 3: Marking HI, I’M PAUL

out the furthest left and furthest right I'm a (mostly) self-
taught artist. I paint

points realism in oils,

mostly still life. I
APRIL 14, 2007 BY: PAUL COMMENT share my work, my
evolving process and what knowledge
I've gained on my own learning journey
here, in the hope that it might help you
on yours.
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First, the furthest left point. In this drawing, it’s the point of the big toe, ringed on
the image here.

In order to mark this point on my drawing, I need to take two measurements: The
distance horizontally from the vertical plumb line, and the distance vertically from
the horizontal line at the bottom of the drawing. Triangulating in this way should
allow me to get pretty close.

I also have the advantage that there are two points already marked now, the
highest and lowest, and I can also triangulate from these points, checking with my
thread, to keep the margin for error as small as I can.

First, I need to get the vertical distance of the point from the bottom horizontal.
This is done in the same way as nding the highest point, by sighting across with the
thread. Since it’s only the distance from the horizontal I’m after, I mark this height
on the vertical construction line on the drawing.

Again, this takes a few goes to get right, with the rst attempt being no more than a
ball park measurement. I nd it’s a lot quicker just to accept that this rst attempt is
going to be out, and just use it as a guide for the next attempt. Repeatedly check
and measure as many times as you need to until you’re as sure as you can be that
it’s right.

Once I’m satis ed that the distance from the bottom horizontal guideline is right, I
can go on to get the horizontal distance from the plumb line.

I nd these distances quite a bit harder to get than verticals. The basic procedure is
as follows: Wrap the thread once round the index nger of each hand, and draw it
out fairly taught. Hold your arms out straight in front of you and lock your elbows.
Holding your thumbnails against the thread as markers, you need to position your
left thumb nail over the point you’re measuring to, and your right over the plumb
line.

Now the hard part. Still holding your arms out straight, move your hands over the
drawing so that your left thumb nail lines up with the vertical construction line on
the drawing. Fix your eye on the point on the paper where your right thumb nail
falls, drop your arms, and walk over to the drawing and mark the point. Sounds
simple. It isn’t.

It always takes me many tries to get these measurements, even using my existing
points to triangulate from. But it’s worth persevering with these initial points,
because if they’re out by the smallest amount, they’ll be worse than useless to
triangulate from to nd further points. In my experience, it’s better to take as long
as it takes to get these points right, or the drawing will just take longer.

For what it’s worth, it took me over an hour to get this one point down to my
satisfaction, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I checked it a couple of times with
the thread at on the drawing, just to make sure I wasn’t too far out. However, all
measuring and marking was done from the spot marked on the oor.

Mind set matters

This brings up an important point I think, and that’s the mind set that you approach
this practice with. If you’re looking for a couple of nice copies for your portfolio, or
to show off to friends, then you may as well just trace the original. One of the main
skills that the Bargue drawings and the sight size technique teach is the ability to
measure relationships by eye. If you don’t strive for accuracy, if you cop out, you’re
missing the point in my view. This is exercise for your eye, and the harder it is the
more exercise you get.

It’s been proved to me many times that this works. When I used to go and sketch in
my local cafe at weekends, I used to nd that the drawings were better if I’d done
some Bargue practice the night before. Without fail, the drawings would be more
accurate and the marks I made more de nite. The thread used in this sight size
method of drawing should be viewed as a necessary evil, I think, and just helpful in
the beginning stages.

It’s all about eye training

The point of sight size practice is to train your eye (or more correctly, your brain) to
judge these relationships reliably without recourse to bits of thread and plumb
lines. But constructing a drawing in this manner gets your brain used to thinking
about judging the position of parts of the drawing in relation to other parts, and
using construction lines to nd those relationships. I believe that this makes it
easier and more natural to imagine these construction lines in other types of
drawing.

Once this furthest left point is in, I move on to the furthest right. On this drawing,
the furthest point on the right is the apex of a curve, which makes life more dif cult.
But Bargue breaks his curves down into a series of straight lines, in order to more
accurately catch the character of the curve. That helps a lot.

Despite that, there are many points on this drawing where it seems to me that a
point is not clearly de ned. To get round this problem, I’ve taken the liberty of
marking the points de nitely on the original plate, so I can see where I’m measuring
from. You can see these points lightly put in with a pencil in this image.

The point on the furthest right is found in the same way as the furthest left point,
rst measuring the vertical distance from the horizontal base line by sighting
across, then the horizontal distance from the plumb line, found using the
thumbnails as markers.

One hour per dot

To get to this point in the drawing took around four hours, and all I had done were
four dots. I have a feeling that I’m very slow at this, but I’d rather make sure that
these points are right than rush ahead and have to do more corrections later. And
all time I’m telling myself that, frustrating as it is, it’s building my ability to judge the
relationships between points, and that this ability should translate, eventually,into
all my work.

Once these four points are in and as accurate as I can get them, the hardest part is
over and I can move onto nding more points on the outline, marking them on the
drawing until I have a basic schematic of the foot, in terms of the large general
shape. Gradually, as I follow Bargue’s schematics and re ne down from the general
to the speci c, a foot will appear out of all these dots.

I hope.

This is one of a series of six posts describing how to copy Bargue plates sight
size:

Stage 1: Bargue plate 5, setting up the drawing

Stage 2: making the rst marks
Stage 3: marking the furthest left and furthest right points
Stage 4: laying in the main shapes of the rst schematic
Stage 5: re ning the schematic
Stage 6: the nished drawing

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About Paul
I'm a (mostly) self-taught artist. I paint realism in oils, mostly still life. I
share my work, my evolving process and what knowledge I've gained on
my own learning journey here, in the hope that it might help you along on
yours.

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