Classical Atelier at Home

For the self taught realist artist

Video: Cast drawing ‘Ear’

I’ve made a Cast Drawing video. It’s a drawing of the EAR plaster cast that I am offering in my shop and which is currently the best selling product of them (besides the skull). You can also see this ear in a drawing by Heather – I wrote about it here. For this drawing I … Read more

Mannequins as nude models

Learning human anatomy is an important part of the study in classical art. Drawing a nude model not only teaches you skills in patient rendering but also anatomy. In the Academy you work on one single nude drawing for up to 6 weeks with a total of  ~50-60 hours ending up super realistic. See here a … Read more

I am not alone

In July I posted a list of blogs of professional artists and art schools which I find useful and informative for those learning classical art at home. But there are also blogs in the internet by other self teaching people just like me. For example this is Heather’s blog and I must say she is … Read more

Drawing of a male nude figure

Practising nude drawing – The ultimate guide

Learning human anatomy is an important part of the study in classical art. Drawing a nude model not only teaches you skills in patient rendering but also anatomy. In the Academy you work on one single drawing for up to 6 weeks with a total of ~50-60 hours ending up super realistic (see some examples here, here and here). … 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

Do not save on the wrong things

I recently received an oil paint set with 12 different colors as a gift. This set of tubes was sold at a very low price for around 3€ so I was curious about the paint’s quality and as I expected, the quality is very low. Although this blog is also about saving money with your … 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