My experience at the drawing workshop is difficult to describe because it has been unusual, unpredictable, quick paced, and as deep and multifaceted as a hurricane system or a weeping willow. The open workshops have a wide range of inspirational hard working models, most of whom can do quick sketch very effectively. The lessons I have received have been creative, challenging, suitable for my weaknesses, and nourishing to my strength and independence. The environment that has been created by George, the owner and teacher of and at the Drawing Workshop, is one that has filled my inner eye and ear with powerful visions and inspiration. George gives his students a comprehensive education that develops their mind, experience, and abilities farther and more rapidly than any kind of school I have had experience with.
My first class at The Drawing Workshop, the Basic Drawing With A Live Model class, develops a student's natural abilities to see. We begin in this class learning to use our natural abilities how to see proportion and alignment, vertical and horizontal. We do this for poses as quick as twenty seconds which build up to poses as long as twenty minutes, exercising speed and proportion. The class has challenged me to look at a complete subject all at once, to really capture what it is I am seeing, and to be able to simplify. The class gains new dimensions when taken in concurrence with other classes. George often brings things from my Structure class into this class with other students and myself. This class teaches me how to bring what I see onto paper.
I have never before heard of anything like the Developing A Visual Vocabulary class. We develop our visual vocabulary by building out of clay and drawing the bones of the skeleton. I would rather say less about this class and leave it as a surprise for the student than to overwhelm the reader. I can say that by working on the skeleton I have immensely improved the way I make the qualities of what I am building in my clay, and I am at the very beginning of the class.
George teaches self-reliance for the artist (or self-reliance through drawing). I have had art teachers before that practically made my drawings for me, but George teaches his students how to be their own teachers. At The Drawing Workshop, I see no limit to how far a student can develop his/her technical freedom, a road to creative freedom, free of worry about technicality. read more