intermediate level of difficulty. I've been working with the side of the pencil for a while. Each of these have almost a progression of going from more. but very soft. Because in. Okay. think about that as the height of an object, which sometimes is true. But did you ever wonder, is Bargue bad? with for a very very long time, and many students do. It’s said that Van Gogh did every plate, in the book twice. Next. I am trying to go as fast as I can for your benefit. and here’s a neck and here's maybe the shirt that they're wearing. This is an interesting little point. I would say a goal is to try to to represent this, as elegantly as you can, to not just start filling in, haphazardly and let the pencil build up and get all waxy because graphite really does have, that tendency. The use of Bargue plates really took hold after the publication of Ackerman’s book. Moving around and manipulating some of the graphite that's already on the page. just like we do for everything in sight-size. here and here and here and here, a few things start to jump out at me. we're working responsibly and not unnecessarily darkening our paper and making changes. And I started really wanting to start shading. It has the corner of the mouth but the corner of the mouth is a bit, difficult to see. Yeah that’s sharp. Perhaps a more important issue is the value of the plate’s paper. I think throughout all of art history painters, draftsman have written about how invaluable the, mirror, is starting with Albrecht Dürer and I would say that it should be an integral, that it is on this side and this side because it feels to me like both. I think you can probably see that little dust that it leaves on the page. Our internal sort of odometer goes from thinking wow, this is so terrible and there's not always sort of a lot of space in between those, two. They photographed the plates, independently of each other, and the prints from their negatives slowly made their way into the atelier culture. To introduce these concepts, the tones are reduced to cloudy shapes and three tones are highlighted: light, medium and shadow, to demonstrate how light and shadow patterns show forms. That's one of the reasons why I'm trying to use a really light touch as I'm. And to others, no. In my own teaching, I use them for two types of student: Why I use them with children has already been explained. because I haven't really felt ready to commit. One of the most common critiques I give to students on Bargues like these is they, neglect to really think carefully about the base and that if we get this. One of the downsides in working this way I might add is that if potential inaccuracies are easily or lazily overlooked, one could later stumble into problems unknowingly. The use of Bargue plates really took hold after the publication of Ackerman’s book. I don't want to, like I said, put more information in. I know that I should double-check before I go any further. The plates I provide are equally sized to the originals and I ask that my students print them at that size. And noticed some sort of using the side of my pencil. I'm just like yup looks exactly like my nose. In other words, when you’re focusing on an eye in a portrait bust, the ear on the other side will be slightly out of focus. So the first thing I'm noticing is there's a big discrepancy here. incremental changes are the most valuable kind in, a project like this. I'm just starting to give a little bit of internal information where I can, where I see something. a cookie cutter pick this up and just drop it right on top. It is beeing used in classical art academies throughout the world. but it's really nice just to get as clean of a look as possible. As, a finish solution, you can just cop make this like this and It's a little bit. The mirror is invaluable for these projects. I thought that the drawings might be more beneficial if enlarged. For those of you ready to get started, be aware that some of these files are quite large: Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. start to develop a way of feeling comfortable with your own handwriting. So I have comfort moving my hand sort of in 45s, but also straight across if need be. I have sharper, crisper edge, I have slightly softer edges, like in here. To be blunt, van Gogh’s attempt above is not well done nor does the skill evident in it match what he claims he learned from copying the plates. Some schools even base their entire curriculum on them. Something that you feel super. And what is most important after this first pass, not during the first, pass, but after it, this tone sort of reads flat. This is really an important tool for this project. even then examples that you saw me work through in my demonstrations, what a student might do is choose a slightly simpler Baruge plate, print it at a larger, scale like the size behind me and copy it in charcoal as a way to prepare, yourself for the complexities of working in charcoal at large scale in 3D in the cast, project. And again I'm doing this before I'm even going to grab the plumb line and check. even though we haven't gone and put the whole lightning bolt in. It's not irreparable if we end up doing that. This is almost more a dark half tone than, it is a shadow. And I would say that that was coming out just a little bit too much. So I'm cautious to, not go waxy with the pencil and I always want for the ending stage of the.