Four weeks later I've finished my first bargue.
As a class we determined this bargue to be a cast drawing of Apollo. Only a greek god could have a butt like that. Amirite?
This bargue took me about four weeks to complete. I have never pushed a drawing this far before and I've never learned so much about creating a picture like I have over this last month. One really important thing I realized is that the fundamental reason why my copies look good is because these masters understood the conventions surrounding form, rhythm, and line that contribute to an excellent picture. I borrowed their decisions then, and I borrowed Charles Bargue's decisions this month.
Speaking of Apollo...
A few months ago one of my good friends Skye drew my attention to a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke called The Archaic Torso of Apollo. It reads as follows:
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
After surrendering to a paradigm shifting work you must allow yourself to change. True masterpieces evoke a feeling of awe and it is in your favor to surrender yourself to something greater, something transcendent. Yes religion can facilitate this idea, but internalizing powerful pieces by the greatest novelists, poets, and painters humanity has to offer, lends itself more greatly to changing and improving humans.
Love \\ Christelle
P.S. For those who read my last post, I'm doing really really well. I really love this academy and the people in it.
P.P.S. You should read The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed.
