ARA The Academy of Realist Art

Survived.....and completed 4 classes at the ARA and am so pleased with the school. They teach the fundamentals of drawing and painting over a 2 year program. We are given a series of exercises to complete from an image of a cast drawing starting with the construct, articulation, contour and finally the rendering. I am now on round 2: Articulation and I am to measure every point and reproduce it as an exact copy. And guess what we use to measure...not a ruler, not a tape, but a knitting needle. Our charismatic Professor Fernando says it trains the eye to see better rather than relying on rulers. ``I keel you`` he says if we don`t get it right!

Mondays are the days we copy from the Bargue plates and wednesdays is live model gestural drawing. The gestural drawing is done using comparative measurement.

It took me months of on line research and several studio tours to finally find ARA with a program that taught in the old masters tradition. I even contemplated places like OCAD, Sheridan and TSA, only to find students of OCAD and Sheridan studying with me at ARA as their establishments do not teach fundamentals that are taught here. I am so damn pleased I found the right institution for my start....if not it could have gone so wrong.....so very wrong.

So below is my first exercise - part 2 - articulation and homework is reproducing all the lines without shading in.

...so back to work for me...lots of homework to complete!