I am thrilled to announce that after at least 2+ years I have finally developed and designed an online drawing class. I did a lot of research and took several online art classes to see what worked, and what didn’t. To my surprise I found I really liked distance learning. I was able to work at my leisure, go back and review key points, and share my experience with other artists from around the world via Facebook.
In designing my class I wanted to fill a void in the online art video world. After researching what was available on the internet and evaluating my own strengths and weaknesses, I came up with DRAWING as a FOUNDATION. I have taught for over 20 years, teaching drawing, pen & ink, colored pencil, gouache, watercolor, pastel, and scratchboard. With the exception of drawing, all of these subjects are techniques. Drawing is the one thing that all these techniques have in common. It is where they all start. You can’t learn these techniques with out having some kind of drawing to work with.
All too often I see artists give up or be frustrated with their work. They rush in too fast to do the painting part, often working from photographs and do not understand what to do. There are drawing errors right from the beginning which were overlooked until color, form or black & white techniques were introduced. After investing countless hours on a piece, the frustrated artist gives up and declares the piece a “failure”.
When I was the Program Coordinator at the New York Botanical Garden, the first thing I did was to make Drawing 1 mandatory for all students. The program consists of 200+ hours for a certification in Botanical Illustration and every student who wanted to take any of the classes had to start with Drawing 1. Sometimes potential students were disheartened to hear Drawing 1 was a pre-requisite, but after going through it, the beginner as well as the experienced artist was grateful for the education.
I have taken what I taught in that beginning Drawing 1 class and expanded it, improved it, and tailored it to artists looking for a good, step by step, in depth Drawing Foundation Class.
The class begins February 18 and runs until April 22, 2015. The videos are available until June 22 during this class to give students plenty of time to do the assignments and review the course material.