Drawing by M. Joy Lemon, Sadie Valeri Atelier Instructor
One of my main goals as a drawing teacher is to improve a student's ability to see and draw accurate shapes. If you can capture the specific proportions and tilt of a specific shape, you can draw anything. What I have found is: Measuring doesn't help. A student who is taught to over-rely on measuring will insist their drawing is "correct" even when everyone else can see glaring inaccuracies. More than measuring, an artist must develop a highly refined intuitive feel for shapes.
Does that mean I never teach or use measuring? No! But measuring is used only AFTER making an intuitive "best guess" first. Measuring is a secondary tool. Intuition is our primary tool.
What do I mean by "measuring"? Measuring is holding up a stylus or even your pencil in front of you with a locked elbow, and using your finger or thumb to mark the width or height of an area of your subject, and comparing that to another area of your subject. This is called comparative measuring, and I do teach it, in moderation. (Another common method of measuring is called sight-size, where your drawing is always constrained to the exact same size that your subject appears to be, requiring a specific positioning of your easel to any 3-dimensional subject. I do not teach this method, but some contemporary ateliers do. In general, ateliers from the lineage of Atelier Lack, like Florence Academy, teach sight-size. Ateliers from the lineages of Ted Seth Jacobs and Jacob Collins teach comparative measurement.)
Bargue Plates, a set of 19th century master drawings widely available in book format, are an excellent historic tool for teaching drawing because they show how to break down complex forms into simple shapes. These are master drawings by the artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, who created a portfolio of cast drawings for the purpose of teaching his students. The drawings were reproduced as a set of high quality prints created by Gérôme's student and professional lithographer Charles Bargue, which is why they are called Bargue Plates (Note the spelling, many people misspell Bargue as Brague or Barque). This set of lithographic prints became the ultimate standard for teaching drawing students in 19th century Europe.
Demonstration My former longtime student Joy Lemon now teaches in my Online Atelier. She has recently filmed herself demonstrating how to begin a copy of a Bargue plate. She is using the method I teach beginning students to help them learn to trust their intuition, instead of over-relying on measuring. You will notice in the sped-up videos below that Joy starts with soft, broad pencil strokes, moving her arm in sweeping gestures from the shoulder, without careful measuring, and yet she achieves a very precise copy in the final stages of her drawings.
These demonstrations are sped up as a quick preview showing the process. The full videos showing Joy's process in real-time are included in my Intro to Classical Drawing course.
Joy starts by drawing one large envelope shape, and then breaks it down into smaller shapes. Joy uses all straight lines, even to draw segments of a curve. You'll see Joy occasionally hold up a tracing of the original plate over her drawing. This helps our online students check the accuracy of their drawings, but they only check with the tracing after making their best guesses as to the size and proportions of each shape. You'll see Joy corrects her drawing freehand. Through guessing first, and checking or measuring second, the student gains the ability to trust their own intuitive sense for shapes and proportions.
By copying Bargue plates with this method, our students are well-prepared to draw 3-dimensional subjects from life, because they have learned to rely on their intuition for accurate proportions, instead of depending on measuring devices.
Atelier students move from Bargue plates to cast drawing and then on to more complex subjects like drapery, figure, and portrait. When an artist is drawing from a live model, there are many very subtle nuances that are impossible to measure. Showing the models' expression and gesture requires miniscule adjustments that are simply too small to measure. At this point the artist only has their intuition, their feelings, to rely on. If an artist has never learned to feel and rely on their intuition, their drawings will lack precision, but even more importantly, they will lack feeling and life.
If you are interested in learning this intuitive method for drawing any subject I hope you will join Joy and I and my other instructors in my Online Atelier. If you want to work through my pre-recorded drawing courses on your own, they are also available for purchase as individual courses or bundles.
Art school is financially out of reach for many, and classical art training was simply unavailable for many decades. Due to these barriers, I am committed to making classical art instruction accessible and affordable to all. All my courses and memberships, including one-on-one personal mentorship with a dedicated instructor like Joy, are priced as affordably as possible.