Bargue Muscles

Copying the Charles Bargue Drawing Course lithograph plates offers students many drawing lessons. At the Academy of Realist Art our students try to make as close to an exact copy as possible. This sharpens their ability to discern shapes, teaches many lessons about how a sculptor architecturalizes form and improves their perception of value shifts. Sometimes the Bargue plates are so subtle in their values that students have difficulty seeing some of the value shifts. In order to better "read" the values instructors frequently talk with students about the form that the values are describing. A great way to better understand the form is to take an anatomy book and try to assign muscles where you think they would be on the sculpture and then look at the Bargue lithograph to connect the values to this muscular structure. Here is an example of Stephen Kivimaki's Antique Torso copy and his muscular study. This had the added value of enhancing Stephen's knowledge of the anatomy - information that will come in handy during figure drawing class.