What are the chances?...

If you hear someone telling you "what are the chances that you would succeed?", remember that, as sperm cell,  you had one chance in a million to become what you are.

Here are some more of Bargue's plates, for you to admire and/or practice drawing. I think I have a chance to draw better than that, because after becoming beautiful in his skill, the artist draws with the soul, not just the pencil.

Plates from Bargue's drawing course

While I do not think drawing should imitate photography, the question "where does drawing start and photography ends?" is not easy to answer. Simply copying life is not an option for me. At the same time, the detail that a graphite pencil can produce is very close to my hear. Not the detail itself, the look.
Back to school, here are some plates from Bargue's course, I will post some for people who want to go this way. In themselves very photographic, yet they stand up on their own feet, as drawing art. Very moving! Or maybe it's just me?

Back to school

There were times when drawing was studied in Academies very seriously. An artist student drew from casts, plates, reproduced the Masters, observed and drew live models. Lessons of art philosophy and aesthetics were part of the curricula. Sigh! (me a graduate of a Faculty of Fine Arts in Holland can tell you that we didnt get any of that)

I finally got my hands on a beautiful and rather rare book published by Charles Bargue in mid 1800s. "Drawing Course" is a collection of plates made by him and Mr Gérôme, in accordance with the high standards of the Parisian art schools of those days.
Im reading, Im looking, Im mesmerized! I started to follow this "course" and will probably not publish here any of my work until I feel there is something in my drawing artistry, whatever that might be, that has improved.