Classes

Artists Olivia Booth and Jill Spector will guide students in fine tuning perceptual drawing skills while also developing more exploratory and unexpected approaches to drawing for the purpose of enhancing their college application portfolios.

This class is specifically for high school students who are interested in developing an art portfolio. Students will create portfolio-worthy works that demonstrate technique as well as intellectual and philosophical curiosity. Each student will work on their individual drawing voice while we explore new drawing prompts daily. We’ll build an environment in which together we clarify vision and message, hone skills, and are all rooting for one another. 

Danielle Yang, Rita Dove Poetry Drawing, 2023

Contour Line, Sketch Method, Line as Value, Continuous Tone, Linear Perspective, Color as Tone, and Drawing with Style.

Open to everyone from total beginners to experienced artists, this class is for students who want to learn to draw what they see before them. We’ll take on different ways of seeing, shifting focus between line, value, texture, proportion, spatial relations and color, and build up a toolbox of techniques and approaches using multiple drawing mediums. We’ll build a greater understanding of the specificity of our own respective ways of seeing as we draw from varied subjects.

TP Drawing by Megan Parmele

Contour Line, Sketch Method, Line as Value, Continuous Tone, Linear Perspective, Color as Tone, and Drawing with Style.

Open to everyone from total beginners to experienced artists, this class is for students who want to learn to draw what they see before them. We’ll take on different ways of seeing, shifting focus between line, value, texture, proportion, spatial relations and color, and build up a toolbox of techniques and approaches using multiple drawing mediums. We’ll build a greater understanding of the specificity of our own respective ways of seeing as we draw from varied subjects.

Edge of Light Drawing by Yvonne Liao

For those who've taken the first Observational Drawing for Adults, this class, expands upon those techniques, revisiting some and spinning off from others. We also explore composition, new approaches to the page and frame, how to fold in style, and get deeper into color theory. We’ll continue to take on different ways of seeing, shifting focus between line, value, texture, proportion, spatial relations and color, and build up another toolbox of techniques and approaches using multiple drawing mediums. We’ll build a greater understanding of the specificity of our own respective ways of seeing as we draw from varied subjects.

Illustrator's Lens, Soo Jung, 2023

A class in which we respond to poems by drawing, exploring various mediums and typography.

In this 5 session class we'll work from selected poems by various poets to create personal and responsive drawings. We'll study how drawing is a kind of writing and visa versa, and the bridge that poetry can play between them. In this way typography becomes a player in the class, but in the drawn sense. We'll explore multiple drawing mediums like chalk, oil pastel, charcoal, graphite and gouache and we'll play with various techniques including collage and frottage while we also hone compositional intention. This class is for students 18 and up, and there is no need to have experience with poetry, or even drawing for that matter! 

Jade Jwa, Nikky Finney Poetry Drawing, 2023

Each class explores a mode of drawing that aims to be useful to artists whose primary meidum is glass.

This class runs a gamut of ways that drawing could be incorporated into one's practice using glass, and share the ways it already is put to use in the group. Our group will draw transparent objects using varying approaches, we'll draw in chalk as one does in a hot shop floor, we'll draw out a narrative of our life with glass, and work on installation drawings for how glass objects come into being in exhibition and other spaces. Time will be spent on practicing fast loose but clear ideation on the spot, for when working in a hot or cold shop or in front of a flame. The class leaves room for the individual ways in which drawing can clarify or enhance current practices. We'll join together in a drawing studio with glass in our minds and hearts.

Implied Line Drawing, 2020

Class time is responsive to the cohort’s needs and interests, and will range in activities from writing about our own and one another’s work, researching artists that connect to students’ inquiry, engaging in group and individual review and projects, improve documentation skills and, above all, expressing ourselves with specifity on the page.

This class is specifically for high school students who are looking to build an art portfolio. Through collaborative group projects as well as individual ones, and with guidance from the instructor, students develop a series of drawings that represent their distinct point of view, technical command, and style. We’ll build an environment in which we intensify and clarify one another’s vision, hone skills, verbalize our messages, and are all rooting for one another.

Favorite Shirt in Color as Tone, by Jeremy Szuder

Drawing as Celebration, Poetry Drawing, 3D Drawing, Diagram Drawing, Drawing as Meditation, The Frames the Image, Drawing Scores

This is a course of drawing exploration and inquiry for students looking to expand their scope of drawing, and for college level students looking to enhance their portfolio work. We'll ask what constitutes drawing, what drawing is for, and how it can change the way we imagine ourselves and the world around us. We’ll work on technique and the skills needed to express ourselves clearly, and at the same time we’ll disorient ourselves to what we know drawing to be.

Poetry Drawing for Pádraig Ó Tuama Poem, by Danielle Yang

Drawing instruction that is personalized due to particular interests, an artistic goal, a current project, expanding ones practice, a portfolio in design or art, or simply because one-on-one is a better fit for the student.

After an initial meeting, a 6-class curiculum is crafted to fit the student's goals and interests, focusing on techniques and approaches along with conceptual challenges designed to broaden and advance their development. Curiculums are supple and student and instructor continue to shape them together.

Driving Study, Ava Hakakha, 2023