If you're looking to launch a rewarding new hobby, this course is your ideal starting point. It covers all fundamental techniques that artists use to draw freely from their imagination or from real-world observation. By the end of this intensive course, even someone with no prior experience will be able to paint a portrait and compose an original artwork from the ground up.
Course Schedule and Lessons:
- Day 1: The Cezanne Lesson
- Mastering color mixing to achieve desired tones
- Day 2: The Silhouette Lesson
- Learning to assess proper proportions, fit your drawing to the paper dimensions, and develop eye-hand coordination
- Day 3: The Escher Lesson
- Mastering how to shade three fundamental 3D shapes: the sphere, cylinder, and rectangular block
- Day 4: The Durer Lesson
- Understanding isometric, reverse, and Renaissance perspective principles; includes practical outdoor sketching sessions
- Day 5: The Degas Lesson
- A detailed lecture on how three-dimensional space has been represented on two-dimensional surfaces throughout art history, covering general compositional principles and schemes, followed by hands-on studies
- Day 6: The Miro Lesson
- Exploring key composition concepts such as line, shape, visual weight, movement, and spatial relationships between objects. A brief lecture on abstract art history introduces this lesson
- Day 6: The Chardin Lesson, Part One
- Learning the fundamentals of still life composition and beginning your still life project
- Day 7: The Chardin Lesson, Part Two
- Developing and completing your still life artwork, learning professional finishing techniques
- Day 8: The Michelangelo Lesson
- Studying human proportions and essential aspects of human anatomy, culminating in a series of sketches from both wooden and live models
- Day 9: The Holbein Lesson
- Learning facial proportions and drawing classical alabaster heads to develop precision
- Day 10: The Serov Lesson
- Creating a dynamic portrait painting from a live model
- Day 11: The Gauguin Lesson, Part One
- Creating a composition featuring one or several human figures from initial concept to successful completion
This final lesson synthesizes everything learned throughout the entire course.
