academy of realist art - Scottish-Art-Scene academy of realist art.pdf · Academy of Realist Art The ARA four level program as practised in Toronto and Boston is based on the 19th

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Academy of Realist Art

Special Issue MagazineNo 4

A p r i l 2 0 1 2


A lifetime devotee of great masterssuch as Caravaggio, De Lazlo andMillais, Ewan McNaughton has longcampaigned to open a classical arttraining facility close to his home inScotland. Ewan has studied art sincechildhood. Over the years he learnedto become highly proficient indrawing and painting, winning anumber of awards for his portraitsand other works. Throughout hisstudies he learned that many fellowart students and graduates wereanxious to learn realist arttechniques, but options were limited.In his belief that any artist shouldhave the opportunity to learn thetechnical skills that are thefoundations for realist art, Ewan isnow working with the Academy ofRealist Art in Toronto to bring itsteaching curriculum to Edinburgh.With ARA UK, his ultimate goal is tocreate a new opportunity for Britishartists to be liberated and become theartists that they long to be.

Ewan McNaughton

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http://www.scottish-art-scene.com



ARA is one of a select few academies in theworld that utilizes the academic approach todrawing and painting. They model theircurriculum and teaching methodologies onthose used by the 19th-century Europeanacademies, with the aim of helping studentsachieve the highest calibre of skills possible.ARA’s highly successful, graduated academicprocess teaches students of all levels to seethe objective truths found in nature and thefundamental skills needed to represent them.

As he explains after a visit to the Academy ofRealist Art studios in North America, “It was alearning environment I had never seenbefore. In place of secrets and mystery oftechnique were clear explanations andsupportive instructors and students. It provedto be a place where previously unattainableanswers to my questions were to hand.Students work in varying degrees ofcompletion collectively demonstrated thatmaster painting and drawing could be learnedas with any other vocation. As far as I couldsee, ARA produced the best results of anyother atelier I had found. The quality ofinstruction really spoke for itself in thestudent work I saw. ARA truly is the startingpoint for a whole new generation of oldmasters.”



Academy of Realist Art

The ARA four level program as practised inToronto and Boston is based on the 19th centuryEuropean academy tradition beginning with Level1: Drawing from the Flat. Students produce anexact copy of a Charles Bargue lithograph ingraphite, working at the same size as thelithograph so as to gain a strong understanding ofstructure, proportion, edges and tonal valuebefore considering further complications likecolour. Even though they work from a flat image,the student gains knowledge of form and howlighting describes form. Through copying exactly,the student and instructor can closely scrutinizeangles and iconic shapes within the drawing andstrengthen their observation skills.

The drawing begins with a construct or schematicdrawing where the student maps out largerproportions, and identifies abstract shapes foundwithin the image thereby training their eye to seeabstract shapes in nature and continue to thinkabstractly when copying from life. In order to dorealist art, you have to learn to think abstractly!The drawing then moves into the articulation stagewhere the student considers form and thedetailing of the contours. The student divides thelight and dark families within the image and fills inthe cast shadows and form shadows with a flattone of the prominent dark value. This way, thestudent deals with the forest before thecomplication of each tree by breaking up thevalues into more manageable families and makingit easier to understand their relationship to eachother rather than dealing with insurmountabletonal information found across the whole drawing.

Level 1 requires students to complete threeBargue drawings in this manner and thencomplete a fourth and final drawing usingcomparative measuring, in other words they areasked to produce a copy at a larger size than theimage they are working from.

This foundation level normally takes full-timestudents about 6 months to complete.



Level 2 continues from the skills andunderstanding of structure, lighting, form andvalue attained in level 1 but now students work‘in the round’, drawing from a simple three-dimensional antique sculpture or cast and usecharcoal which allows for a greater range ofvalue than graphite and is a more malleablemedium. The first of these drawings is of asimple cast, usually taken from Michelangelo’sDavid’s ear, eye, nose or mouth. Thesedrawings are worked in a ‘sight-size’ methodwhereby the student draws the cast at theexact same size they are seeing it. The easel isstationed close to the cast and the studentassesses proportions, values and edges from aset viewing point about 5 to 10 feet away. Aftereach mark on the paper, the student returns tothis same viewing point and the process isrepeated. The student works without aconstruct and is forced to apply the knowledgegained in level 1 to create the illusion of depthand form.



The second charcoal drawing deals with a moredetailed cast, usually a full figure or bust. Wecan see from this picture taken from a student’sviewpoint, that the drawing is exactly the samesize as it is seen. This drawing was done by a 13year old girl. She started the program aged 11and worked her way through the drawingscoming in once a week. Even though this castseems to contain more complicated information,the student breaks complex areas into largerform modelling and abstract shapes in order tosimplify.



In level 3, the knowledge and skills acquiredthus far are applied to another cast but withthe introduction of paint. The first castpainting still only uses black and white so asto continue a logical progression andunderstanding of previous concepts whilstadding new information about the paintingprocess, more specifically the different layersof paint and how and why they contribute toa smooth and even ‘academic finish’, withoutthe complication of colour. Colour is only atinted value and is prioritized below valueand form. Here we can see a completed castof Hermes done in black and white.



The second painting in level 3 introduces alimited palette. As well as black and white,the student uses raw umber or burnt umberand yellow ochre to introduce the conceptof colour temperature i.e. cool colours orwarm colours. With the introduction ofcolour, the student learns how to properlyorganise their palette to avoid creatingmuddy or chalky colours. This is a studentpainting of a Saint Jerome cast. Note thevariety of colours and values created withso few paints on the palette.



The student may bring in some form ofred drapery or background material to beincluded in the background. This creates anatural progression into the arena of stilllife painting explored in level 4. Thispainting still only encompasses black,white, and 2 or 3 other colours.



Level 4 introduces still-life painting. Thestudent is required to choose objects tocompose their own still life so long as theycomply with set criteria. This must include awhite porcelain object, red drapery, and agreen object to compliment the red. Thepainting process, as with cast painting, iscompleted in a very specific way. First theimprimatura or ‘dry brush drawing’ is donein paint diluted with mineral spirits andscrubbed on to the canvas to map out thebasic values and drawing stage of thepainting as seen in this picture.



When this is dry, the student completes adead colour layer or ‘local colour lay in’.This is the base colours of the actualobjects diluted with turpentine which killsthe paint colour. After a second dead colourlayer has been done to make any drawingor value adjustments, the first paintingstage can begin. Here, paint is applied inthe same consistency as it comes from thetube. The paint is placed on the canvaswithout much blending creating a colourmosaic. This is the meat in the sandwich ofthinner consistency layers. In the ‘secondpainting’ stage, the whole thing is doneagain with paint mixed with linseed oil andis worked in a series of glazes creatingsmoother blending, enforcing the ‘fat overlean’ rule of academic painting. The wholething is built up in this way with all objectsbrought to the same finish.



Students are then encouraged to employthe knowledge they have to create theillusion of different textures. Not all still-lifeobjects need to be brought to the samesmooth finish as white porcelain or draperyand variety can be found in selectingdifferent textures found in the arrangementand bringing them to whatever finish ismost effective, for example, we can seehere that the pot in the background is onlybrought as far as the first painting stagebecause the glazed finish required forporcelain or drapery is not necessary toconvey reflective metal. This is the stagewhere a student begins to apply theirknowledge more freely. Once they knowhow to bring something to a high finish,they can decide where not to bringsomething to a high finish!



Students then create ‘Tenebristic’ still-lifepaintings, using lighting to create’chiaroscuro’ or the effect of lit objectsemerging from the darkness. This is avery theatrical dramatic effect mostnotably used by Caravaggio. The objectsare placed in a shadow box where thelight source is controlled from a canopy soas to illuminate or shadow certain selectedareas of the still-life to create the mostpleasing composition.



Throughout the program, students dofigure drawing from the live model atthe same time as working through the 4level fundamentals. At the drawingstage of the program, they work onfigure drawing and when they reach thepainting stage, they do figure painting.Here we can see a gestural construct orschematic drawing done with a similarapproach to creating a construct for aBargue drawing, only with figuredrawing the student works withcomparative measuring using a knittingneedle. A single unit of measurement isselected on the model and all othersubsequent measurements are taken inrelation to this. The first gesturalconstruct identifies the largerproportions and the expression of thepose and should consist of no more than10 to 14 lines.



The detailed construct is then developed tomap out the smaller proportions inside thelarger construct such as hands, feet spacesbetween arms and torso etc. All lines arekept light and shapes are kept rectilinear.This drawing was done in carbon pencil.



As with Bargue drawing and castdrawing, the light and dark families areseparated by massing in one large tonalvalue which is then refined. Shapes arestill left angular at this stage.



The shapes are rounded out in thearticulation stage and values andgradations are further refined. This can bedone using a brush or paper stumpalthough this must always be finished bygoing back and filling in with the carbonpencil. This drawing is demonstrated fromstart to finish in ARA’s ‘Drawing the Figure’DVD which is available on request from thewebsite, and took about 30 hours tocomplete.



Here is an example of an Academy of RealistArt student’s figure painting. This waspainted by Evelyn Choi who came to Torontofrom China aged 19. She completed all 4levels in just 2 years making her one of thefastest students to complete the program.She recently undertook a private commissionfor $20,000.



Another ARA graduate, Will Nathans’ portraitof Cardinal Foley now hangs in the Vatican.Will was awarded in the top 15 of theAmerican Portrait Painters Societycompetition. He teaches at the SilvermineSchool of Art in Connecticut and willhopefully be working more closely with ARAat the Boston school in the future.


© scottish-art-scene.com 2012 All rights reserved© Copyright 2012 This magazine is the copyright of xartx.com, please do not alter it or extract images or words. ©Copyright of the images remains the property of the Academy of Realist Art and are subject to their terms and conditions.

A c a d e m y o f R e a l i s t A r t

Following a successful classical drawingworkshop in London last month, the nextAcademy of Realist Art UK event will be a7 day Old Masters painting workshop. Theworkshop is planned for July 9th to 15th,2012 at the Art’s Complex in Edinburgh.This highly popular workshop will be ledby ARA Director and Senior InstructorFernando Freitas, who will take studentsthrough the stages of academic oilpainting as they work from a copy of anOld Master painting. Through thisexercise, they will gain a clearunderstanding of the principles of oilpainting, the best techniques, and whichmaterials to use when.

Special Thanks

We must thank Ewan McNaughton of theAcademy of Realist Art for his greatassistance in putting this exciting issuetogether.

Please pass it on

It is Frigyes Karinthy’s theory that we areall only six steps away from beingintroduced to any other person in theworld. So please promote Scottish Artand the Academy of Realist Art by“introducing” this magazine to yourfriends and colleagues.

To visit ARA’s website:www.academyofrealistart.co.uk

To visit our website:www.scottish-art-scene.com

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academy of realist art - Scottish-Art-Scene academy of realist art.pdf · Academy of Realist Art The ARA four level program as practised in Toronto and Boston is based on the 19th