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Caracalla - an unfinished plate

Submitted by Sam on 27 March, 2012 - 18:36

I've been working on this Bargue plate (number 38 in the sequence) for several weeks now, and I've found it increasingly tedious. When I came to draw in the fiddly bits of hair (which I foolishly left until after I had started shading the face), I found that they didn't slot in to their proper places easily. I found myself having to distort and elongate strands of hair to accommodate increasingly apparent errors of alignment on a more fundamental level. I have conceded defeat and abandoned this plate as "unfinished".

Whilst I like the smooth gradients on the face, I find it difficult to look beyond the horizontal distortion that caused me so much aggravation when I came to put in the details.

The composite image shows my drawing against the silhouette of the original plate, illustrating very clearly how my attempt has gone wrong. The original is significantly thinner.

1000 Hours

3 comments

Your too hard on yourself Sam. Your attempt isnt wrong, your merely a victim of how your mind focuses.
You may or may not be aware of this but there is an actual scientific phenomenon for what you've just experienced that many artists have encountered. One of the benefits of Bargues drawing is it actually makes you aware of it.

As you view the day to day world, forms (especially people) that are seen by our eyes are quickly scanned for signals and reference points, whether they be of a threat (glaring eyes,flaring nostrils,corners of mouth,rise/fall of body,aggressive postures) or to gather new information it cant match up with its existing knowledge base-(unfamiliar shapes or mass, tricks of light) etc.. the brain however will actually extrapolate most of the detail between these reference points.
When the eyes are sharply concentrating on something for an extended period of time (as with any form of art study), the brain recognises a demand from the optic nerve, that " no longer scanning need to retain and understand this form'. The brain goes into a 'magnify effect' on the image to 'map out ' and examine relate it to the points it already has stored in its memory . Its only when we draw (or sculpt or write) under these conditions you actually see the effect in action.
Your version of the bargue plate actually depicts where you were concentrating the hardest and longest.. the profile of the front of the face (to me) looks magnified.
When your brain tires, it resorts back to filling in the gaps with what it knows rather than what the eyes are seeing. double edged sword for anyone studying for long periods of time.

When I was shown how to do Bargues I was constantly told to take plenty of breaks to counter this phenomena. As you've pointed out it is very tedious the more detailed the plates become,so its best to work in 15 to 20 min blocks at a time.
I personally think your study is of much better proportion than the plate shown anyway. :D

Much easier with a spot of Photoshop! The number of times I imagine hitting undo in real life...

Nothing a bit of liquid resize can't fix!