Practical Exercises from Historical Studio Traditions (Online Course) Fall 2025 w/ David Holt

September 7 to September 28 (Sundays), 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, Eastern Time

**All sessions are live and will be recorded, students do not have to be present. All recordings will be available to students for 3 months after the final session, after 3 months the recording will be deleted.

Please check your email spam/junk folder for your Zoom invite.

DEMO: https://youtu.be/AW5lXCf7tzA

Course Description

This online studio course will guide participants through a range of time-tested drawing and painting exercises and tips from traditional artists’ training practices, from Early Renaissance workshops and European art academies to the Bauhaus and other modern art schools. We will also explore lessons from historically important drawing and painting manuals and examine works of key artists, the influences of relevant social and scientific developments, and curricular tensions between goals for technical mastery and creative expression. Seeing what artists have considered to be essential knowledge and how it should be taught will help us better understand evolving concepts and theories about art across historical periods. Lessons will be applicable to a variety of subjects, styles, and media.

Each weekly session will focus on different types of exercises and involve the presentation and demonstration of specific concepts along with instruction and feedback in applying these in your own work done during and between the sessions. You may work in any painting or drawing media.* Examples from relevant artists, slideshows, videos, journal articles, bibliographic information, and other resources will be shared throughout the course.

*(I am happy to provide lists of suggested materials for oil, acrylic, or watercolour/gouache media, as well as for drawing media if requested.)

Course Outline

Week 1 - Observational Drawing

This session will focus on the process of drawing as a search for form, first through haptic “drawing as seeing” exercises involving contours and topographical descriptions, then through optical measuring of proportions, alignments, planes, and perspectival foreshortening. Tonal modeling (chiaroscuro) and tonal relationships in compositions will also be practiced.

Topics:

Line, proportions, planes, perspective, tone. Ideas about representation and the picture plane from Alberti’s “veil” to the use of grids and the camera obscura; point-to-point and sight size drawing; neuroscience and left brain/right brain thinking; techniques for simplifying complex forms and measuring proportions; simplified tonal modeling, shadow edges, measuring relative tones, tonality in composition, tonal sketches.

Week 2 - The Human Figure and the Head

Exercises will explore the movements of the human figure and emotions conveyed through the head and facial features. Working with basic geometric structures, simplified anatomical masses, and key landmarks of the figure and head will assist participants in drawing more effectively from life or imagination. Comparisons of canons of proportion and working from the antique will provide a foundation for classical references. Compositions with single and multiple figures as well as portrait compositions will also be explored.

Topics:

Gesture, proportions, simplified masses and geometric structures, bony landmarks; foreshortening; Charles Bargue, classic anatomical, texts, antique examples; use of straight-line silhouettes; comparisons of academic life drawing styles from different periods; composing with the figure. Physiognomy, caricature, gesture, and emotion in Leonardo, Le Brun, Poussin and others.

Week 3 - Colour

The physics of light, the physiology of colour perception, and the history of colour models inform exercises that will help participants better understand and control the elements of colour (hue, tone, saturation, and temperature) in colour mixing, matching, and expressive uses. We will also explore the properties of various colour pigments and their uses for different painting palettes and media. Colour interactions, illusions, and the effects of different types of lighting on colour will also be examined. Finally, we will explore ways to achieve richer colour effects through a variety of paint layering techniques, textures, and juxtapositions.

Topics:

Colour perception and colour ordering systems from Goethe to Munsell; colour/pigment characteristics and relationships; different types of colour palettes; colour matching, interactions, and illusions (Albers); direct and indirect methods for colour painting; Renaissance, Impressionist, pointillist and other colour techniques.

Week 4 - Abstraction and the Avant-Garde in the Academy

Exercises for developing visual sensitivity and creativity will be explored with regard to modern studio art instruction influenced by Surrealism, Dada, abstraction, the Bauhaus, and other teaching. We will also see how art lessons in public education settings from the 19 th century until now have both reflected and shaped our ideas about art. Twentieth century social realism and the contemporary resurgence of classical atelier practices will also be examined.

Topics:

Surrealist artmaking strategies, Dada, Constructivism, Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, Hans Hoffman school; composition in abstract painting; collage, grid, automatism; Dewey, constructivist, and contemporary trends in art teaching; Kaprow and art pedagogy as practice; social realism and classical realist practices.

Course Materials List

Participants in this workshop are free to work in drawing and painting media of their choice since the workshop is focused on exercises and strategies rather than any particular painting or drawing techniques.

Here are three suggestions for limited colour palettes for oil or acrylic paints:

1) 5 colours [vibrant] (white, black, and primaries to approximate CMYK palette. Some manufacturers have basic yellow, red, and blue primaries.)

1. Titanium white

2. Cadmium Yellow Light or Lemon Yellow

3. Cadmium Red Deep or Alizarin Crimson

4. Phthalo Blue

5. Mars Black or Ivory black

2) 5 colours [muted] earth based colours

1. Titanium White

2. Yellow Ochre

3. Venetian Red or Indian Red

4. Phthalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, or Cobalt Blue

5. Mars Black

3) 10 colours (these will allow for matching nearly any colour you may encounter in painting from observation)

1. Titanium White

2. Cadmium Yellow Light

3. Yellow Ochre

4. Cadmium Red Light

5. Indian Red or Venetian Red

6. Alizarin Crimson

7. Ultramarine Blue

8. Phthalo Blue

9. Phthalo Green

10. Ivory Black or Mars Black

Also see Painting: Powers of Observation website entry devoted to oil painters’ palettes.

(Note the limited palettes of John Singer Sargent, Susan Lichtman, and Ken Kewley.)

http://www.powersofobservation.com/2009/01/painters-and-their-palettes.html

Watercolour or gouache colour palettes may use the same colours as above, with Chinese white and Payne’s grey for white and black. Readymade sets of tubes or pans (e.g. eight colors) will also be fine.

Solvents, mediums, additives, etc.

1. For acrylics and alkyds or other water-based oil paints, only water is needed.

2. For regular oil paint one may wish to use small amounts of a simple medium (e.g. stand oil/Gamsol) and non-toxic solvent for clean-up.

Supports

1. Participants may wish to work on stretched canvas, canvas panels, non stretched canvas, wooden panels, paper or other appropriate support (e.g. primed canvas for painting as needed for oils or acrylics). All water-based media may be used on unprepared paper of sufficient weight (e.g. watercolour paper).

Brushes

1. A handful of brushes of different sizes appropriate to the chosen media and scale of works will be needed.

   Be advised, it is always better to work with the largest brushes possible as a way of focusing attention on the

   relationships of large tonal areas and shapes rather than on detail, at least until the final stages of painting.

Palettes

1. For oil paint: disposable paper, wood, glass, plexi, etc.

2. For acrylics: disposable paper or other hard surface (even regular cardboard scraps can work well)

3. For watercolour or gouache: plastic or other palettes with indented areas of sufficient sizes for mixing colours

2 — Drawing materials

1. All participants will benefit from using sketchbooks or other drawing paper to make notes and quick sketches and studies. Softer grades of pencils (e.g. 4B, 6B), charcoal, conté, and/or pastels will allow for working with larger tonal areas in developing compositions.

2. Wet media (e.g. pen/brush with ink wash) can also be used

3. Some participants may wish to focus on using drawing rather than painting media throughout the course, which is fine. Any choices of drawing media will be supported and encouraged. If so, a variety of white and toned drawing papers will afford some variety and flexibility.

3 — Other general supplies

1. Portable pocket mirror or other mirror to see your work in progress in reverse

2. Paper towels, erasers, drawing boards, clips, palette knives, masking tape, non-toxic fixatives, etc. as needed

3. Containers for water and/or solvents as needed