Eye training - a series of cast drawings

[Paul Foxton]

Thanks Mischa, "intensive discussions" - I like that.

Thanks also for the encouragement, it's nice to know I'm on the right track.

I couldn't agree more about the progression in the Bargue plates. It is, after all, a drawing course, and certainly seems to have been envisioned that way. The next cast drawing will still not have tone, but will correspond to the second Bargue plate, where he begins to refine the outline a stage further from the even-width straight lines he uses for the schematics in plate one.

I need to get back to the Bargue plates soon, because my general plan is to stay one step ahead with the Bargue plates of the cast drawings, so I get to see how he does it first.

I confess, I'm a little apprehensive of adding tone, when I get to that stage. I'm not convinced that my charcoal technique will be up to the job. I've recently started a series of small tonal still life drawings to try and whip myself into shape before I try doing it on a cast.

I have a question for those of you who have done the Bargue exercises: On many of the plates, especially in the darkest darks, I can see parallel lines running through the tone. At first, I thought that this was the grain of the paper showing through, but the more closely I look at them, the less sure I become. It looks to me like Bargue may have used these (almost perfect) parallel lines to fill in the tone blocks, followed by smoothing with a stomp or some other implement - am I right?

[Steven Sweeney]

Originally Posted by Paul Foxton

I confess, I'm a little apprehensive of adding tone, when I get to that stage. I'm not convinced that my charcoal technique will be up to the job.

You might reduce some of the anxiousness about this by not worrying at first whether the value you put down matches

[Paul Foxton]

That sounds like a good way to approach it Steven, thanks for the advice.

[QUOTE=Steven Sweeny] toned in relation to each other, rather than each to an

[Steven Sweeney]

Originally Posted by Paul Foxton

Faced with this, I've thought about matching the relationships between tones, as you describe. But if I have a deep black in my subject, and I work down from the lights, darkening everything else so that the relationship between the lightest light and the mid tones is preserved, I exchange a glass ceiling on my lights for a glass floor on my darks - you can't go any darker than black.

Quite right, but if you establish your lightest lights (which will be the unblemished white paper, or white chalk if you're working on toned paper) and your darkest darks first, and then leave them alone, you won't push either out of the drawing. Instead, you'll have to interpolate the remaining values between those established extremes in your value range.

And yes, we can't draw "light" (in the sense of that reflective surface), so we represent it or suggest it by making sure that we preserve at least some ratio of the relationship between that reflective surface and the surrounding areas. To oversimplify, if "real life" gives us a 100-value range, but for all practical purposes we simply don't have the materials to draw or paint the lightest or the darkest 10, then our drawing will necessarily lie within an 80-value range. But we preserve the ratios between the values, so that a difference of 10 value steps in nature will have to be represented in the drawing by an 8-step difference, an adjustment that will avoid the "glass ceiling" or "floor" problem. But the difference will still be convincing with respect to the representation of the reflected light.

Across the Mississippi River from my old office is a shipwright's dock for repair of towed river barges, which are metal and, so, there's a lot of welding going on all the time. One of the local master landscapists, Joe Paquet, did a painting of that scene, on a fairly bright day, and yet through his command of the value relationships, he convincingly created the appearance of a tiny welding arc -- about the brightest light you'll see, after the sun -- from a vantage point over a hundred yards away. Of course, he couldn't even begin to accurately depict the arc's intensity in an absolute sense, so he used the brightest hue he had available and then adjusted everything else to "fit" between that and the darkest dark he also needed to complete the scene.

I admire and hate people like that.

[Paul Foxton]

Originally Posted by Steven Sweeny

...preserve the ratios between the values, so that a difference of 10 value steps in nature will have to be represented in the drawing by an 8-step difference, an adjustment that will avoid the "glass ceiling" or "floor" problem.

You know, I've been mulling that one over for months now, I even started a series of drawings to try and figure out the best answer. And here you go, cutting cleanly through all my fretting with a clear and simple answer which, now that you've said it, seems blindingly obvious to me.

I admire and hate people like you

[Ngaire Winwood]

Dear Paul

Thank you for starting this thread. I too have Clytie and am eager to start drawing her for practice-Bargue style.

What a difference it makes having something solid (3D) to practice from instead of photocopies of the Bargue plates.

She was worth the extra dollars to get her here to me 'down under'.

I just have to figure out a good lighting position for her etc.