student handbook
Table of contents Our Philosophy Studio policy Sight-size history Curriculum [drawing and painting] Assignment table [drawing and painting] How to correctly set up your easel Block-in demo for a standing contrapposto Value scale diagram Charcoal figure drawing demo Drawing and painting materials Reccomended reading list [drawing, painting, anatomy] Curriculum [sculpture] Assignment table [sculpture] Sculpture demos Sculpture material list Reccomended reading list [sculpture] Relevant articles Credits
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Philosophy The London Atelier of Representational Art (LARA), was established in response to the rarity of rigorous representational art education and is unique in the UK in its approach to teaching the most fundamentally important aspects of drawing, painting and sculpture from life. Inspired by the atelier method of instruction, the unique emphasis of the course is given to working directly from the live model in a continuous pose of no less than a week and up to a month under unvarying (natural) north light conditions, giving optimum time to observe the figure and understand how to see. Working with tutors 6 hours a day and using the “sight- size� technique we aim to teach essential concepts of proportion, line, gesture, form and light to best master expression of the human form. The previously lost atelier method of teaching, passed down through generations of artists, provides the ideal environment for students and professional artists to perfect their skill. It is our belief that it is necessary to teach the grammar of drawing, thus giving the student the confidence to execute their ideas, whether they decide to become a representational artist, or pursue any alternative visual medium. To instill this creative confidence we encourage the student to apply their knowledge by exploring further techniques and media through quick drawing.
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LARA Studio Policy General rules
Model room
The studio opens no later than 9.15. Critiques start at 9.30 and you are expected to arrive in good time to prepare your materials for the day and be ready. Lunch break falls between 12.30 and 13.30, followed by the afternoon session. Classes end at 16.30.
The morning model poses between 9.30 and 12.30. You are encouraged to arrive 15 minutes before class begins to prepare your materials and set up.
The class should remain quiet and orderly during studio hours; mobile phones must be switched off or to silent, and equipment left in your allocated space. Personal belongings should not be left at the studio. Please leave the studio as you find it. Charcoal and pencils should be sharpened over the bin and care should be taken where you place your sharpening blocks and paint rags. Keep your easel clean and free from paint stains and charcoal dust, ready for the next person using it. Drawings, paintings, and boards should be left in their allocated places at the end of each session, and not allowed to clutter the studio. At the end of each trimester, you are required to gather your output over the ten week period to be reviewed in an end of trimester critique. After your critique, please take your work home with you. Avoid leaving containers with volatile solvents open for extended periods of time to prevent the studio environment from being flooded by unnecessary fumes. Smoking is strictly prohibited in the studio. At the end of the pose at lunchtime and in the afternoon all model heaters must be switched off fully.
It is your responsibility to set up and maintain the pose before class. You are also responsible for keeping time and calling the breaks for the model. If the following class has a different arrangement of boxes, please be courteous and remove your set-up. Model sessions typically last 20 minutes, depending on the model, and are followed by 5 minute breaks. The third break at 10.35 is the long break and lasts 15 minutes. The same schedule is followed in the afternoon after lunch. For the majority of the year the afternoon pose begins at 13.30. During winter months when the light is scarcer this is typically brought forward half an hour to 13.00. Please respect the concentration of others; keep your mobiles set to silent and refrain from setting up your easel and equipment during the pose. If you are late to class you must wait for the next break to enter the model room. Due to the space consuming nature of the sightsize method, it is suggested, if possible, you do not leave and re-enter the model room whilst the model is posing, as you would likely interrupt the focus of other students. Take care not to obstruct the pathway between another student’s easel and their viewing spot, as this can prove extremely distracting. Sightsize is a method that requires a particularly high level of focus and concentration, so please consider those around you. Eating in the model room whilst the model is posing is considered disrespectful and is discouraged. Alcohol is similarly forbidden during class time. 4
On correcting the pose
Accommodation
If you notice a significant deviation from the original pose, feel free to suggest to the model corrective measures in an effort to control the pose. A consensus must be reached, however, with your classmates, and the model, to realise a solution that is beneficial for all. If the model experiences difficulty with the pose, bear in mind modifications to the original pose may have to be made.
Regrettably, LARA is unable to provide students with accommodation, but we will try and help where we can.
You are encouraged to approach and walk around the model in order to understand the form, however you are not permitted to touch the model. Neither are you allowed to take photographs of the model without their express permission.
Please note that most people, except citizens of the countries of the European Union, need a visa to study in the UK. Unfortunately LARA is presently not an accredited institution, as the cost of compliance with all the requisite paperwork is so high that we would have to drastically reduce the number of tutored hours, or raise the fees to an unrealistic level. Always check your status before setting out. For full information, see the Home Office website:
It is due to the democratic nature of the model room in which students are expected to work together and communicate that earphones and personal music players are discouraged, as they isolate individuals from the group. (Bear in mind a great deal can be learned vicariously from the examples made in the critiques of other students.)
Home Office student visas
http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk/en/ Application Application is open to all: there are no restrictions on age or experience. Terms of business LARA reserves the right to refuse any application. Students are expected to bring, or purchase their own materials. LARA does not charge overseas students a premium. Course places are allocated on a ‘first-come, first-served’ basis. The school shop is open daily.
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Sight-size history Believed by some to have been invented in the 13th century, the sight-size drawing method first appears in recorded history in Roger de Piles’ Cours de Peinture par Principes of 1708. Still taught in classical ateliers, the method resolves many of the visual difficulties of drawing and painting from life. Simply put, it is a method of viewing one’s model and one’s drawing simultaneously, so that both images appear the same size. The artist stands a specific distance away to look, and then comes forward only to make the marks. Sight-size is usually taught to students in a way that incorporates measuring. The artist first sets a vantage point where the subject and the drawing surface appear to be the same size. Then, using a variety of measuring tools - which can include strings, sticks, mirrors, levels, and plumb-bobs - the artist draws the subject so that, when viewed from the set vantage point, the drawing and the subject have exactly the same dimensions. When properly done, sight-size drawing can result in extremely accurate and realistic drawings. It can also be used to draw the exact dimensions for a subject in preparation for a painting. Professional painters will in time, develop an ‘eye’ that precludes the need for measuring devices and plumb lines, but the observation method itself is not abandoned - instead it becomes second nature. Sight-size can be taught and applied in conjunction with a particular sensitivity to gesture to create life-like imagery; especially when applied to portraiture and figurative works.
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Three Year Drawing and Painting Curriculum
Cast drawing
Students spend a three hour session each day drawing or painting from the nude model. The poses are typically sustained longposes spanning the course of a number of weeks, providing the student with ample time to study the figure in depth. The remaining three hours are devoted to a series of studio assignments, that begin with the initial cast drawing exercises, and lead on to developing accomplished finished paintings by the end of the curriculum.
The white surface of a cast allows the the student to study and translate forms without the complexities of local value and texture. This is the point in the program in which the eye is most intensively conditioned and trained to see and translate nature with incredible accuracy, as well as instilling a deep understanding of the mechanics of light and value. Great emphasis is placed on the design of shapes and edges. Students make an initial two value block-in drawing of a simple cast to familiarise themselves with working in sight-size, before moving into full value charcoal drawings, in which capturing a convincing impression of light plays a major role.
First year Figure Drawing Figure drawing is the basis of all good draftsmanship, and for this reason, drawing from life is the foundation of LARA’s curriculum. The course focuses on various distinct elements of drawing the figure from life, initially through the simple use of outline to focus the student’s mind in achieving accuracy and excellent construction. The emphasis then shifts to working with masses and outline, then on to full value drawings in which every aspect of drawing the figure is tackled. Pencil Figure Drawing Students initially focus on developing a competent outline drawing, and understand the foundations of a good figure drawing, such as sound proportions, a lively gesture, and strong construction. The skills learned at this level are carried forward to every part of the curriculum. Charcoal Figure Drawing Charcoal introduces the student to working in masses with a broad range of values, allowing them to make a highly naturalistc impression of the figure. It also provides a natural progression into painting; here edges, shapes and accurately translated values play as important a role as they do in figure painting.
Second and third year Depending on the students’ level in drawing they will move into paint in the second year whilst continuing to draw alongside. Their third year will be spent concentrating solely on painting. Painting Painting is the natural continuation of the mass drawing training of the first year with the addition of colour. Working from both the model and still life, students complete a series of exercises that cover colour mixing, paint application, to achieve textures and atmosphere in painting. Using a limited palette of 5 colours enables the student to keep focused on tone, temperature, mark making, and painterly qualities - those aspects that can ultimately separate a painting from a photograph - which have less to do with absolute colour than with overall mood. Students learn to appreciate the impression, the whole statement of values that belong to the specific scene they are painting, whether it be a figure, still life, or a portrait. The complicated problems of representing nature are solved by understanding the form as a combination of shapes with specific colour values, each relating
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to the whole. Preliminary colour studies are executed before the main work is attempted, to better understand the broad effect and flow of light. A general colour ‘block-in’ or ‘ebauche’ is developed into a work that retains unity and a strong sense of drawing - economy of detail and broadness of effect being stressed. Typically a painting project begins with a studied drawing in which the accurate proportion and placement of the big masses are established. This is then transferred to canvas and the drawing can be developed from a number of different angles, for instance with an initial monochromatic underpainting, or a simplified colour block in. Regardless of the specific method, a direct treatment is encouraged, striving toward a sense of the whole, where each individual component is assigned its proper importance in relation to the whole effect. All throughout the figure painting program lessons learned in previous drawing exercises are sustained: accuracy, proportion, capturing a lively and believable gesture, conveying a sense of anatomy, and designing a believable value scheme that describes the effect of light, are key. Advanced projects in the drawing program allow a natural progression into working with oil paint. Students initially begin with a grisaille palette to familiarize themselves with the medium and the problems of accurate value mixing and paint handling. They soon progress into working with the LARA colour palette, enabling an accurate and convincing colour impression, marrying a strong sense of drawing with the principals of direct painting.
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Studio projects assignment table Before progressing through the curriculum the student must have successfully completed one or more of each assignment, deferring to the judgement of their teachers. The Secondary Assignments can only be attempted after the completion of the corresponding Core Assignments. Please note that the speed at which each student progresses is strictly individual. Each exercise has great significance and must not be overlooked on the grounds of haste.
Students are encouraged to keep a sketchbook that will be taken into account during end of term assesments.
Secondary Assignments
Specifications
Moderate cast
Life size charcoal portrait on white Roma Paper with compositional studies
Bust portrait, head only. Straightforward pose, no tilt or turn
Finished charcoal drawing of cast on white Roma paper
Complex cast
Life size charcoal portrait on white Roma Paper with compositional studies
Bust portrait, head only. Moderately complex pose, of head, slight turn or tilt
1E
Finished charcoal and white chalk drawing on toned paper (grey)
Complex cast
Life size charcoal and white chalk portrait on toned charcoal paper (grey) with compositional studies
With hand(s). Slightly more complex pose of the head, slight turn or tilt. Make thumbnail sketches beforehand
2A
Cast painting on canvas with grisaille palette using transfer drawing
Simple cast
Core Assignments
Specifications
1A
Pencil block-in of cast on white Canson paper
Simple cast
1B
Finished charcoal drawing of cast on white Roma paper
Simple cast
1C
Finished charcoal drawing of cast on white Roma paper
1D
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Secondary Assignments
Specifications
Life size painted portrait in grisaille palette on canvas with transfer drawing and composition studies
Bust portrait, head only. Straightforward or moderately complex pose of head, slight tilt or turn
Memory painting of the pear. No peeping
Life size painted portrait in limited palette on canvas with transfer drawingand composition and colour studies
Bust portrait, head only. Straightforward or moderately complex pose, of head, slight turn or tilt
Initial thumbnail sketches and compositional studies are necessary, and must be passed by a teacher, as does the final arrangment prior to the start of the painting
Painted portrait in limited palette on canvas with transfer drawingand composition and colour studies
With hand(s). Slightly more complex pose of the head, slight turn or tilt. Make thumbnail sketches beforehand.Dispense with necessity of life-size
Core Assignments
Specifications
2B
Cast painting on canvas with limited palette using transfer drawing
Moderate cast Head or bust
2C
Cast painting on canvas with limited palette
Complex cast
3A
Fruit painting (pear)
LARA colour palette, close to flesh range, with tangible form. Takes as long as it takes
3B
Fruit painting (pear)
One day alla prima project
3C
Memory fruit painting (pear)
4A
Simple three object still life painting. Begin with thumbnail sketches (10) and compositional studies (5). Arrangments should make reference to a master work
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4B
Core Assignments
Specifications
Further still life painting project. Begin with thumbnail sketches (10) and compositional studies (5). Arrangments should make reference to a master work
As above. Introduce new variables i.e. different textures, higher chromas, more objects and shapes of a higher degree of complexity
Secondary Assignments
Specifications
Model room assignment table
1A
Core Assignments
Specifications
Secondary Assignments
Specifications
DIN A4 sized paper, two value pencil study
Two values, in the strictest sense – Light shape, shadow shape. Emphasis is on, in order of importance: •Correct proportion •Efficient block-in •Using the right construction •Description in the outline •Finding the shadow line
Draw an ecorche skeleton over a finished pencil drawing with tracing paper and label the parts
Make reference to the LARA skeleton and the anatomy books in the recommended reading list
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1B
2A
2B*
Core Assignments
Specifications
Secondary Assignments
Specifications
DIN A2 sized paper, two value pencil drawing
Two values, introducing a single intermediate half-tone between the shadow shape and the light shape. Emphasis is on, in order of importance: •Correct proportion •Efficient block in •Using the right construction •Description in the outline •Finding the shadow line
Draw an ecorche skeleton over a finished pencil drawing with tracing paper and label the parts.
Make reference to the LARA skeleton and the anatomy books in the recommended reading list
DIN A2 sized charcoal drawing on Roma paper
Full value mass drawing with background. Introduces new principles such as keying a drawing and working in an expanded value range, working with shapes and edges in the place of outline
Draw an ecorche skeleton over a finished pencil drawing with tracing paper and label the parts
Make reference to the LARA skeleton and the anatomy books in the recommended reading list
DIN A2 sized charcoal and white chalk drawing on toned paper (grey)
Full value mass drawing with background. Last assignment before progressing into figure painting
Draw an ecorche skeleton over a finished pencil drawing with tracing paper and label the parts
Make reference to the LARA skeleton and the anatomy books in the recommended reading list
* Students will repeat this excerise until they have completed all studio cast drawings and have begun a grisaille cast painting
Make a memory drawing of the pose. No peeping
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Core Assignments 3A** Large figure painting in grisaille palette on canvas with transfer drawing
Specifications
Secondary Assignments
Specifications
Must be preceded by a preliminary colour study
3B*** Large figure painting in limited palette on canvas with transfer drawing
** Students will repeat this excerise until they completed a grisaille cast painting and have begun a limited pallet cast painting ***Students will repeat this excerise until they have completed all LARA colour palette ‘pear’ studies
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How to correctly set up your easel
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Block-in demo for a standing contrapposto
Stage 1: Find the top of the head and bottom of the foot (the vertical limits of the figure), and establish the following key points: Pubic triangle (relating to the pubis bone, a rough halfway measure for an upright figure). Pit of the neck/sternal notch. Navel. Decide on the general placement of the figure and ensure it fits comfortably on your paper width-wise. Drop a plumbline from the pit of the neck to help establish the placement of the standing foot, and draw a centre line for the torso.
Stage 4: Resolve the drawing by increasing the complexity and specificity of your shadow-shapes and outline. Express form by manipulating the edge quality and design of your shadow line, and introduce a faint half-tone to help explain how the light planes are turning into shadow. Keep a clear distinction between your group of light values (the value of the paper and the half-tone) and your shadow value. Retain a sense of unity across the whole figure.
Stage 2: Find the widest parts of the pose, and add the following key points to your drawing: Bottom of the head (chin). Pelvic points (accompanied with a gestural line to explain the tilt and placement of the pelvis). Bony points (high-points) of the shoulders, arms and legs. Line across the breast/nipples Draw a simple straight line block-in around this construction, beginning with an envelope shape, and establish the fixed points of the pose that will underpin the figure. Stage 3: Develop the drawing by introducing new high-points and become more specific with your block-in. Design a system of simple shadow shapes (with a dull pencil to distinguish it from the outline), keeping your lights and shadows unified.
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
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Value scale diagram
Nature
Paint
Charcoal
Pencil
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Charcoal figure drawing demo The following steps are meant to illustrate the evolution of a charcoal value range figure drawing. Please keep in mind that drawing is a flexible process, so continuously check and correct gesture, proportion, and body type. You will frequently waiver between stages; as you begin to more accurately design the shapes, discrepancies between the drawing and the model will become obvious and require correcting. Stage 1: Block-in the figure with simple, straight lines aiming to capture the gesture, proportions, and body type of the model.
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 2: Map out the shadow shapes to isolate light and dark masses on the figure and fill in with a light, even tone. Stage 3: Establish the full range of values (key) in the whole picture, including background. Stage 4: Work on transitions, edges and accents. Generally bring the drawing to a finished level.
Stage 3
Stage 4
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Drawing and painting materials
Drawing
Colours for LARA palette:
Sketchbook Either wood pencils or mechanical .7mm clutch pencils in the following grades: 2H, H, HB, B Nitram charcoal (vine) H, HB, B (can be purchased at LARA) Pencil sharpener Putty rubber/kneadable eraser Sandpaper block for sharpening Masking tape Craft knife Canson paper Roma paper white (can be purchased at LARA) Tracing Paper (different sizes)
Cremnitz/Flake/Lead White (basic lead carbonate in oil) Yellow Ochre Cadmium Red Raw Umber Ivory Black Cobalt Blue For painting materials, we recommend the following suppliers: Michael Harding Old Holland C Roberson Blockx Vasari Windsor and Newton
Oil Painting Wooden arm palette Hog bristle brushes (a set of at least 8 ‘flats’, with some ‘filberts’ and ‘brights’) Selection of flexible steel palette knives Cold pressed linseed oil Windsor and Newton Sandsodor Artist’s cold-pressed linseed oil Zest it (for rinsing brushes) Airtight metal brush cleaner Stretched linen canvas or gesso panel - 18”x24” approx.
Bright Filbert Egbert Flat 18
Recommended reading list Drawing The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed, Dover Publications, 2003 [Required] The Human Figure by John H Vanderpoel, Dover Publications Inc, 2000 Charles Bargue and Jean-Leon Gerome: Drawing Course by Gerald M Ackerman, Graydon Parrish, 2007 Figure Drawing for all it’s worth by Andrew Loomis, Viking Press, 1943 Life Drawing by George Bridgman, Dover Publications Inc, 1972 Master Class in Figure Drawing by Robert Beverly Hale, Watson-Guptill Publications Inc, US, 1991 Painting Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed, Dover Publications, 1987 The Practice of Oil Painting and of Drawing as Associated with it by Solomon Joseph Solomon, Seeley, Service & Co, 1941 Velasquez by R. A. M. Stevenson, BiblioBazaar, LLC (10 April 2009) Anatomy Artistic Anatomy by Paul Richer, translated and edited by Robert Beverly Hale, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1971 Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist by Stephen Rogers Peck, OUP USA, 1982 Constructive Anatomy by George Bridgman, Dover Publications Inc, 1974 Human Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form by Eliot Goldfinger, OUP USA, 1992 Der Nackte Mensch by Gottfried Bammes, Dover Publications Inc, 2004 19