Drawing Workshops

Drawing Workshops

It is possible to learn to draw in one week. I have witnessed it many times. Obviously, it is an intense week, and further practice is necessary in order to "set" the skills. A second, level 2 class will generate in students enough confidence to pursue drawing for pleasure independently. The experience of the first intensive feels like a journey behind the scenes of your own perceptual system. It can be tiring, exhilarating, frustrating and thrilling at different times. [see New York Magazine article] It literally changes the way you use your eyes. In an intensive, a momentum builds up to reinforce the new way of seeing. In a weekly class, we have to recreate the experience every week.

Intensive drawing workshops can run from 2 to 40 hours and longer. They are designed as a highly structured sequence of exercises framed by short lectures, demonstrations and feedback sessions. An overarching theme informs and unifies all the programmatic choices: the idea of triggering a shift into another way of seeing which is home, so to speak, to the intense observation peculiar to drawing. Various strategies are introduced first separately, then in combination.

The progression introduces sequentially the five basic components of the skill of drawing:

- The perception of edges, introduced through contour drawing

- The perception of shapes and their relationships, introduced through negative space drawing

- The perception of the third dimension, or perspective, introduced through the twin techniques of sighting proportions and sighting angles

- The perception of light and shadow, introduced through value drawing

- The sense of the gestalt, where all the components are integrated into a harmonious whole

Except for short initiations, all art supplies and sighting tools are provided in an individual kit at the beginning of the workshop.

[see "before and after" student drawings]

[see comments from students]