First Session, Summer

Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art, LAAFA, is a classical art school offering student mastery in academic drawing, painting, and sculpture. It seems that in the art world today there is a movement to return to the way our old masters studied art. This school offers that foundation with a west coast flair. Their Atelier school offers a three year degree program. For the working, professionals and retired people like me, they offer 10 week Sessions that meet days, nights and weekends. Check-out their website at www.laafa.org


You can't yet enough drawing, so I started my first 10 week session with two drawing classes. Figure Quick Sketch was taught by a Hawiian student from The Art Center College of Design, Kirk Shinmoto. We had wonderful California style models. He always started the class with quick gester drawings, then longer anatomy studies.





Head drawing was taught by a California artist, Aron Westerberg. He started class with 4 or 5 quick sketches before sharing his keen eye with longer poses. Aron gave homework, as many of the drawing teachers do, they want you to draw, draw, draw.














I also took a class in composition, taught by an artist from Scotland, Douglas Kirk, who came to LA to become an animator as well as paint. We created compositions with paper cut-outs, limited values/colors. The pink and purple one is a study of the composition of Seurat's "Sunday on La Grande Jatte". The green and black one is my patio gate with cat in the window, a homework assignment. I got carried away with detail, said the teacher.








On Saturdays I enjoyed getting to know LA with Plein Air painting; did not produce any paintings, but it helped me to see warm and cool colors in landscape on small 4X6 canvas boards. It was a great way to see the beaches and hills of California.