Classical Atelier at Home

For the self taught realist artist

Advices from a professional artist

In 2006 I was happy to find an artist near where I live who has attended a classical atelier in Florence. Born in Jugoslavia, artist Michael Milosevic, who lived in Canada for a long period of time and then moved to Florence to study at the Angel Academy of Art now lives in Bad Homburg … Read more

Squint your eyes!

Squinting helps us to seperate the lights from the darks and allows us to see larger relationships. You’ll need that for judging composition, values and shapes. If you want to judge the value of a given color you’ll sometimes have a hard time doing so because color distracts us from the value. But when you … Read more

Got no drawing casts? (part 2) Make your own!

As you know cast drawing is a very good way to learn to draw a three dimensional object. It’s the second step in learning classical painting techniques as it is taught in many ateliers. The ateliers have many plaster casts from which the students can choose. But what about someone learning at home? There are … Read more

Eyeballing

Eyeballing is a very usefull and necessary technique to be able to spot differences between the reference and your artwork. As a child I loved to make these ‘spot the differences’ games that were printed in magazines. The more difficult the better. And so it is with your art training at home. I guess I … Read more

Anatomy tools

In order to paint a figure correctly you need to know about anatomy – where the muscles are originated, how they work and which bones they move. To just look at what you see is not enough – you’ll need a thorough understanding of anatomy. It is not necessary to be able to name every … Read more

Got no drawing casts? Just use your city’s monuments!

What’s the advantage of an anatomical drawing cast compared with a real model out of flesh and blood? It holds perfectly still, always has time, has no color distracting you while you just want to study drawing and they charge no money. There are anatomical drawing casts available out there (for example here for those of … Read more

The noobs guide to observational drawing

If you are new to drawing you propably have some dificulties with drawing what you see. You rather draw the idealized  image that you have in mind ‒ let´s say you are to draw an eye of a person. If you are new to drawing you would draw the image of a stereotype eye that … Read more

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Bargue Drawing – Learning to see in two dimensions

The Charles Bargue Drawing Course is the collected set of knowledge from centuries of academic art education. It is beeing used in classical art academies throughout the world. It was developed and widely used in the mid 19th century as a foundational exercise for fine art training. Since the comeback of traditional values art schools … Read more

Foundation

To be able to paint realistically it is essential to be able to draw realistically. Many ongoing Artists slip up doing the more complex subject of painting too early without having profound education in drawing – the easier accomplished skill. Drawing trains the eyes. Practising drawing trains perception to a high degree and sets the … Read more