Can tracing help you develop your drawing skills? Learning to draw well is difficult. It can take years of practice and good instruction and even then, there are no guarantees. We make sure our students understand this before they begin learning with us, and most are eager to accept the challenge. But once in a […]
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It’s been a while since I recorded a new video for Youtube, but I’m glad to be back at it. This one features Kelsey, who is one of our favorite models to draw. The process documented here is the same one I use for all my drawings, and the same one presented in detail in […]
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A couple of years ago, I broke my wrist on New Year’s Eve. I know what you’re thinking, and no… it wasn’t the result of too much boozing. That would at least be a fun story to tell, but the truth is far more dull: I was spreading salt on our icy back steps when […]
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Before we get started, I have to say that I’m a little late to this party. The “new” pencils I’m about to discuss here have actually been available in some parts of the world for over a year already, and I’ve had a set lying around the studio for some time. Life being what it is, […]
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Today I published a new video to Youtube – it’s one of the time-lapse portrait drawing demonstrations I do from time to time. What I like about this one is the model. We’ve worked with DaLawn Simpson at the studio since we opened nearly 11 years ago, and he’s one of our favorite models. He’s […]
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The Problem Our studio is already full of easels. We have somewhere between 12 and 15 of them depending on whether we’re counting the slightly broken ones that we use only in a pinch. That sounds like a lot but it isn’t because there’s not one of them that I get to call “mine”. My wife […]
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One of the things I love most about teaching is seeing how students incorporate things they’ve learned at the studio in their own work. The best of them seem to employ the concepts and methods we teach in a way that is both familiar and novel at the same time. Since we’ve begun teaching online, […]
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I’m not a big fan of “laws” in drawing and painting. There’s an exception to every rule, so it seems that whenever I tell a student that x is “always true”, there ends up being some damn reason why it’s actually not true in the particular case at hand – and then I have to backpedal. But […]
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We’re thrilled to be included in a new exhibition at the University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne, IN. The show features work that’s representative of the classical or academic tradition in drawing, painting and sculpture. All 4 Vitruvian instructors – David Jamieson, Melinda Whitmore, Anthony Adcock and Anna Wakitsch – are featured in the exhibition, […]
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I love drawing with graphite. Nothing beats the control and precision offered by a sharp graphite pencil. But there’s one thing I hate about graphite: it gets “shiny” if you’re not really careful, and shiny drawings are ugly. If you don’t know what I mean by “shiny”, grab a soft graphite pencil and a piece […]
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