As a first year student at the GCA we spend 4 hours a day making copies from the Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course.
We begin by coping features, looking for recognizable shapes to train our eyes, using comparative measurement to find the halfway and quarters. If you can give the shapes you see a name, it gives your eye a fresh look, and you are better able to copy the exact character of the shape. For example here is a drawing after a cast of an ear, (taped to the drawing pad), and my copy to the right of it.
Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course, Ear Copy
In coping I found the shape of a duck, a fish, a head of a giraffe, and an eel. When you see a shape as an animal, you then observe the character of that particular animal and compare that with what you’ve drawn. Looking back at this drawing now, I see my giraffe’s head, (ear canal shadow), is a little droopy and that made my ducks tail, (the light shape just above the giraffe), too thick.
Here is an excellent blog post on finding animal shapes: http://grandcentralacademy.blogspot.com/2010/10/finding-shapes-part-1.html
Here are some more example of my copy work from Sept. 2011 – Jan. 2012.
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- Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course, Ear Copy 2011
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- RCG Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course, Feature Copies 2011
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- RCG Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course, Hand Copies 2011
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- RCG Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course, Figure Copies 2011
