The Georgetown Atelier is an apprenticeship-style school that specializes in traditional drawing and painting. It's located in Seattle's historic Georgetown District, renowned for its thriving artistic community. It's housed in a charming brick and wood building that was once the bottling plant of the old Rainier Brewery.
The Georgetown Atelier is designed for students who are aiming to achieve a rock-solid foundation in traditional drawing and painting. It's intended for the aspiring career artist- whether gallery or industry, or for the already practicing artist who needs to take a step back and build a skill-based foundation that was skipped over in prior education.
The curriculum combines both observational and constructive methodologies, formulated to provide a balanced education. The founder/instructor has both extensive training as a classical artist and as an industry professional. His teaching and curriculum draws from both territories.
The Georgetown Atelier offers 4 program tracks:
Full-Time Comprehensive Program
Full-Time 1 Year Intensive Program
Full-Time Custom Program *
Part-Time Program
* This option available ONLY if the student has prior training AND has portfolio samples that demonstrate a sufficient levelof mastery of applicable areas in order to "transfer credit".
Comprehensive Program
Year 1: Drawing
Year 2: Monochromatic Painting/ Warm-Cool Painting, and Limited Palette Painting
Year 3: Advanced Painting
Year 4 (Optional): Students are given the opportunity to continue into a 4th year as a full-time student, or as a mentored student on a part-time basis.
1 Year Intensive Program
This program mirrors the 1st year of the comprehensive program, except students spend the first 2 semesters drawing, and the 3rd in Monochromatic Painting.
Students have the option to continue into the 2nd year Comprehensive Program after the 1 Year Intensive is completed. The instructor then works with students individually to determine if any additional drawing projects are needed.
Drawing
The drawing portion of the curriculum forms the foundational pillars for everything that follows. Students begin by learning to 'block-in' the figure and other subjects. The relative simplicity of materials allows students to learn critical practices without having to juggle paint complexities.
Below is a list of Core-Subjects within the Drawing Curriculum:
- Block-Ins, Working Broad to Specific
- Constructive Anatomy, Inventing the Figure (new!)
- Rendering
- Composition I
- Creative Perspective (new!)
- Drawing on Toned Paper
- Drawing with Color Temperature and using Custom Materials
- Photoshop I (new!)
Monochromatic Painting, Warm/Cool, and Limited Palette Painting
In the second major stage of the curriculum students are introduced to painting. Students begin by working in Grisaille (grayscale), in order to learn painting procedures and materials without having to juggle color complexities. This way, students are able to more readily apply their experience gained through drawing into painting. Students then learn to paint in color one step at a time: first with warm/cool relationships, then with a limited palette.
Below is a list of Core Subjects within this section of the Curriculum:
- Painting Materials and Mediums I
- Painting with 6 Values
- Placing 'tiles' with paint
- Drawing to Painting Transfers
- Painting in Layers
- Fundamentals of Color Temperature: Warm/Cool painting
- Learning the Reilly Method with a customized Earth/Flesh Tones limited palette
- Transitioning to an Open Palette while making use of Value-Color 'Strings'
- Painting with a 6 color 'Velasquez' limited palette
Advanced Painting
The final stage in the curriculum is learning to paint with advanced techniques and with a full-color palette. Using all the knowledge, practice, and principles gained though drawing and painting with color constraints, Students embark upon the virtually limitless domain of oil painting in full-color.
Below is a list of Core Subjects within the Advanced Painting Curriculum:
- Painting Materials and Mediums II
- Composition II
- Photoshop II
- Advanced Painting Techniques: Sculpting with the paint-emulating the surface of the subject and building texture with impasto, Glazing over impasto.
- Advanced Portrait Painting
- Expanding your palette one color at a time and on a need basis according to the painting.
Last updated on 2012-07-12
