1. Bargue Plate Part 1: Blocking In Written by Mandy Hallenius

2. What is a Bargue Plate? A 19th century drawing course
Teaches proportion, values, and other essential drawing skills
Used by contemporary artists to increase their visual literacy

3. Why Copy a Bargue Plate?
Many famous artists have copied Bargue plates to increase their drawing skills.
This Bargue plate was done by Picasso!
Pablo Picasso, Study of a Torso, (Musée Picasso), age 12 or 13

4. How does it work?
Learn drawing skills by copying the plates as carefully as possible.
Different plates are intended to focus on teaching different concepts.
Some plates are more difficult than others to copy well.

5. Try it! Let’s start with the line drawing, known as a “block-in.”
We will create the line drawing in stages.

6. Think Big to Small
When drawing, always look for the biggest ideas before worrying about smaller ideas.
One tool artists have to help them think big is the notional space box.

7. Notional Space Box
Represents the amount of space that the drawing takes up.
Touches the highest,
furthest left,
furthest right,
and lowest
points of the drawing.

8. Draw the Notional Space Box
Draw the notional space box on your Bargue Plate.
Use your skewer to measure the width and height
Make a notional space box that is the exact same size on your paper.

9. Envelope
An envelope is another big idea that helps establish the biggest shape in the Bargue Plate

10. Envelope
A good envelope uses a small number of lines (this one uses 5)
Envelopes can “cut through” minor parts of the drawing.

11. Envelope skewer Draw the envelope on your Bargue Plate.
Use your skewer to measure how high up or over the envelope touches the notional space box
Draw an envelope inside the notional space box on your paper

12. Follow-Through Lines
Now that some big ideas have been established with the notional space box and envelope, we can use follow-through lines to further describe the arm.
Follow through lines are big, straight lines that connect disparate parts of a drawing.

13. Follow-Through Lines
Notice how this line connects the back of the arm to the forearm and fingers.
The line starts at the notional space box and ends at the notional space box.

14. Follow-Through Lines
Follow through lines help artists maintain control of their subject’s proportion by providing multiple reference points.
Knowing where this follow-through line hits the top of the arm and the bottom of the hand helps artists make sure the forearm is in the right place.

15. Follow-Through Lines skewer
Draw a follow-through line on your Bargue Plate.
Use your skewer to measure how high up or over the follow-through line touches the notional space box
Draw the follow-through line on your paper
skewer

16. Make More Follow-Through Lines

17. Notice anything special about the follow-through lines?

18. Follow-Through Lines
Artists often use repeating parallel lines to create structure in a drawing.
Parallel lines also help to organize complex visual information - it’s a lot easier to focus on a few line angles than 100 different angles!

19. Follow-Through Lines
Do you see the angles that intersecting lines create?
Looking for these angle relationships helps artists to be more accurate, and help the eye see more nuanced visual information.

20. Follow-Through Lines
Classically trained artists often use only a handful of different line angles in a block-in.
Repeating parallel lines are part of the “design” that Charles Bargue intended to teach to the people who study his plates.

21. Continue Follow-Through Lines
If your page starts to look a little crazy, don’t worry - you are doing it right!
Try to find as many repeating parallel lines as you can!

22. Continue Follow-Through Lines
Once you have a fair number of follow-through lines down, you can erase back the part of the lines that you don’t need.
The basic shape of your subject should start to emerge.

23. Refine Your Block-In
Now that you have set your proportions and found the basic relationships of the parts to each other, you can start using smaller straight lines to refine your drawing.
These are all straight lines!

24. Final Touches
The very last thing to do in a block in is to add any of the smaller details.
You want your block-in to look as close to the one on the Bargue Plate you are looking at as possible

25. How Did You Do?
Does your drawing have the same proportions as the plate you referenced?
Did you use straight lines?

26. How Did You Do?
Did you find some follow through lines that connected far-reaching parts of your image?
Are your line angles accurate?

27. Secondary National Arts Standards:1.a, 1.d, 2.c, 2d, 6c
Secondary Common Core Math Standards:
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSG.CO.A.1
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSG.CO.A.4
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSG.CO.D.12
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSG.GMD.B.4
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSG.MG.A.1
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSG.MG.A.3
Secondary Common Core English Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST