Sight Size Cast Drawing

Cast drawings are a time-honored and highly effective way for artists to refine their drawing skills. For centuries, artists have studied plaster casts and sculptures to practice technique and to learn how to convincingly depict form, light, and space using a two-dimensional medium. In this workshop, we revisit this classical tradition as students create highly refined charcoal drawings—ideal additions to any art portfolio.

Cast drawing also presents an excellent opportunity to study portraiture. All of the casts we’ll be working from at ZAFA are classical portrait busts or death masks, offering us exquisite models that never shift or require breaks.

This class centers around a long-format drawing project designed to explore a wide range of fundamental drawing concepts. As students begin mapping out their drawings, they’ll be introduced to Sight-Size, an optical measuring technique popularized over 200 years ago and used by many celebrated artists and institutions throughout art history. We’ll also cover other visual measuring strategies and a systematic approach to portrait construction.

Throughout the course, students will learn how to block in the cast, organize values, and create a convincing light effect. As drawings progress, we’ll explore more advanced topics such as drawing passages, edge control, atmosphere, planar analysis, and how to establish a focal point.

Topics covered in this workshop include:

• Sight-Size: an optical measuring technique dating back to the 1800s

• Additional measuring techniques for seeing visual relationships

• Value organization, value compression, and creating a light effect

• Understanding and simplifying light and shadow shapes

• Edge hierarchy and creating soft and hard transitions

• Useful anatomical landmarks for portraiture and head construction

• A clear, step-by-step approach to building a drawing—from the initial lay-in to the final refinement

Join us as we create classical cast drawings using traditional techniques and explore the essential elements of drawing together. This information-rich class will help strengthen your foundation while leaving you with a high-quality, portfolio-ready piece.

Each stage of the project includes live demonstrations, lectures, handouts, and personalized critiques. Students will also have the opportunity to observe the instructor working on a cast drawing alongside the class.

I hope you can join us

Details

10, 2hour classes

September 16th to October 16th

Tuesday and Thursday evening.

5:30-7:30PM

This course is $500

We believe that art classes are more fun when shared with a friend, bring a friend who has not taken one of our courses before and you will both receive a %10 discount off of the listed workshop price. 

To sign up for this workshop please fill out and submit the registration form below.