Review: London Fine Art Studios

Besides the life drawing class at the Royal Drawing School, I've also been taking a class at the London Fine Art Studios this term. I found them on Google and even though their website is disorganised to the point of almost being unnavigable, I managed to sign up for this class. The school offers two foundation classes that they recommend before taking any of the more advanced classes. I've been going to the Foundation I class on Saturday mornings for a few weeks now and out of the ones I've taken it's my favourite art class so far.

The school seems quite traditional, imitating old masters and focusing on figurative drawing and painting. I heard some comments from other people in the class about how they chose to go there because they don't like modern art. Personally, I'm not too concerned with art styles at this point, I just want to soak up all the technique I can.

In this first half of the course, the structure of each class is the same: we pick a cast from a selection they have and draw it in charcoal. The teachers walk around the room, offering tips and advice. There are about 12 people in the class, although this varies from week to week since there are different options of taking the class.

They talked a little bit about sight-sizing in the beginning but there isn't much formal theory instruction which I like. The weekend after next, we'll switch to oil paint as our medium and I'm looking forward to being able to ask questions about that.

Since I don't have my own casts, I've been practicing at home with copies of Bargue's Drawing Course.

I bought that book a while ago after hearing it mentioned repeatedly online and in classes I attend. I haven't yet found the time to really spend time with it but I hope to be able to this week. If I do, you'll be able to read about it in my next post!