Advanced Drawing Classes

6 Week Course – Price £195

Dates to be announced.

Advanced-drawing-classes

The Advanced Classes

The advanced student will be working on longer poses. Lasting 3-6 Weeks, a total of 18 hours of study.  A problem that students face is sustaining a long pose.  After a few hours they have run out of ideas.  This course will give students the tools to sustain a pose for any length of time. The problem will be knowing when to stop.

drawing classes
First portrait from life by James Mcloughlin

See students work from the course >>>

The course is designed to teach students the system for realistic drawing or painting. This method can be applied to still lives, landscapes, portraits and figures using any medium. The same approach is used for all the workshops which can be an advantage for students that understand the process.

Teaching Style

Beginners and experienced people are welcome. Understanding is key and nobody gets left behind. Each student will be helped until they grasp the principles of the lesson. Louis believes in leading from the front, demonstrating each step in front of the group and on students’ work if needed. Louis Smith studied Classical Art in Florence and has exhibited his work in the BP Portrait Award and Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

drawing classes

The Curriculum

Besides following the steps of a rendered study we will also be working on exercises to help the students comprehend each stage of the process.

  • Measuring: looking at placement, comparative measuring, proportion, perspective of the face and line weight.
  • Silhouette stage: describing shadow shapes, observing the relationships between negative and positive space.
  • Local tones: grouping the darks into an average flat tone.
  • Darkest dark lightest light: Highlighting the darkest and lightest accent.
  • Fall of light: observing the effect of light on the head or figure, the further from the light source the darker it gets.
  • Big form modelling: we need to detach ourselves from the idea of what we are drawing, ignoring all the details of the model in front of us, and engage our conceptual brain, if it’s a head then see it as a simple geometric form, and render the head although it were a sphere.
  • Variations of the darks: In this stage, we aim to bring the shadows to a finish.
  • Rendering the lights:  This is the final stage of the drawing and we focus on rendering in order, the biggest forms, the medium forms, the small forms and so on.

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Equipment

The studio is equipped with easels and work stations to make it more convenient for the student to organise their materials and focus on their work.  The studio is also lit with balanced lighting which can save a lot of problems when dealing with a colour palette.

drawing classes
Image shows the workstation, the Alla Prima painting is for display purpose.

Materials you will need for the course;

  • 2 x 2B Pencils
  • 1 x Craft Knife
  • 1 x Pencil Sanding Block
  • 1 x Hard Eraser
  • 1 x Putty Eraser (Hard)
  • Several Sheets of Cartridge Drawing Paper A3
  • 1 x Knitting Needle
6 Week Advanced Drawing Classes £195.
Registration

6 Week Advanced Drawing Classes £195. To register for the course, fill in your details and pay a 20% deposit below. Then pay the balance on the day. An email will be sent to you to confirm your attendance the week before the start date.

Beginners

Students are advised to attended the beginners course to get the most out of the advanced course.  It is important that students have a strong grasp of the basic principles before graduating to the steps of portraiture or figure drawing.

drawing classesThe beginners course is designed to help students draw with a detached attitude. Have you heard of the saying “draw what you see”?  It is not as easy as that!  The brain has a tendency to represent the visual world  symbolically with an affinity for symmetry and pattern. A childs drawing is a typical example of this. The crayon drawing of the family all face forward with stick figures, round heads and curly wurly hair.  This is a natural way of describing the world.

The problem is that the natural world is full of abstract variation so the student has to constantly battle with this symbolic tendency to describe reality.  It is almost like learning another language and then discarding your own.

First, the student needs to understand the visual laws that surround them and how to edit what they see before they can begin to describe reality.

For Information on the beginners course click here>>>

Timetable

Wednesdays, 7.00pm-10.00pm

Venue Address

Louis Smith Art
Phoenix House
Ellesmere Street
Manchester
M15 4JY

Travel

Set navigation for Cawdor Street.  Ellesmere Street is blocked in the middle for the next year. If you are traveling by car enter Ellesmere Street by turning left after the Church on the roundabout over the Mancunian Way.

Free Car Park at the rear of the building on Cawdor Street.

Public Transport, trams, buses timetables and parking, click here>>

Contact

Louis Smith

Tel: 07980989666

Email: louissmithart@gmail.com

facebook.com/louissmithpainting