Description
Course Overview | Enrol Termly or Enrol for the Full Year
Discover and understand the approach to drawing of the old masters of the Renaissance. This yearlong online apprenticeship programme teaches you the foundations and principles of drawing learned in the early stages of apprenticeship during the fifteenth century in Florence. In this course you will uncover the principles of Renaissance drawing and learn the approach and underlying logic of design of the greatest drawings in the history of art. The fundamental elements of figurative drawing will become the basis of your own work through absorbing the methodology of the Renaissance Masters on this course. To teach you the practical methodology and process of the Renaissance Masters, this course consists of a full year of lessons in which Renaissance Drawings are analysed in detail and then reconstructed live in real time demonstrations. In the course you will study and be guided in replicating Renaissance Drawings using their step by step methodology of the original artists so that you learn and repeat their approach. The course centres on the work of Andrea del Verrocchio and his circle and unpicks his revolutionary new approach to depicting the human form to achieve likeness, naturalism, ideal beauty, relief, and striking dynamism. The primary focus of the course is the practical application of the methodology of drawing developed by Andrea del Verrocchio and learned by Leonardo da Vinci as his apprentice with the purpose of reviving this method and using it as a basis of drawings in The Renaissance Workshop today.
You Will Learn:
- The practical approach to drawing of the Renaissance Masters including the head and face and the full figure both nude and draped
- Where Renaissance artists started their drawings and the formula and system of design which underpinned each drawings completion
- How to draw each part of the human body, the intrinsic design and outline of each aspect of the human form
- How to draw in layers with confidence in the manner of the artists of the Renaissance
- To draw in a manner which makes positive use of errors in the execution of the drawing for form a good judgment of the subjects’ proportions and dynamic
- To draw from both observation and from your own mind
Course Schedule
Term 1: Introduction to Renaissance Drawing: the principles and process of this historical approach
In this ten-week term you will be shown the basic methodology and process of the artists of Verrocchio’s circle. You will see how Renaissance drawings were made from the beginning of a drawing up to the finishing touches with tone and sensitively modelled contours. We will study in close detail a range of drawings by Verrocchio and by artists who studied after him including Leonardo to build an understanding of how they approached drawing various different subjects. You will learn how to approach drawing the head, the nude figure, and the draped figure. This term will introduce you to the practical step by step method of drawing used by the Renaissance Masters to sketch out the subject lightly with loose, cursive strokes before drawing the linear design on top of the light sketch with slightly more distinctive lines. You will also learn about tone and how to finish a drawing.
Term 2: Introduction to Renaissance Portrait Drawing: the elements and process of drawing the head
In this ten-week term we focus on understanding and learning the precise methodology and process of drawing the head and face used by Verrocchio, and which he taught to his apprentices like Leonardo da Vinci. You will learn how and where Verrocchio began his drawings of the head and why he emphasised certain elements for particular effects. You will discover every aspect of drawing the head and face used by the Renaissance Masters and learn how to execute a portrait drawing using the same linear elements as them and in the same order and structure. You will be guided through the Renaissance process of portrait drawing live and absorb the historical methodology by recreating a series of Renaissance drawings of the head and face. You will learn to use the formula and system of representing the human head and face as taught by Verrocchio and espoused by his extant drawings.
Term 3: Introduction to Renaissance Figure Drawing: the dynamic structure of the human body
In this ten-week term you will learn the Renaissance method of sketching the figure, outlining the parts following their movements and inclinations, and shading the drawing to create a sense of volume and relief. Alongside these practical elements of drawing the figure, you will learn the fundamental ideas which underpinned Renaissance figurative drawing which include the order and hierarchy of shapes comprising the body and the process of drawing them. You will also learn how to apply the principles of proportion as understood in the Renaissance which were derived from the Vitruvian canon outlined in Vitruvis’ De Architectura.
