Method
Our method has helped over 1000 students in the past ten years to become better artists. Whether absolute beginners, or experienced learners, our students have seen tremendous improvement in their artistic abilities by following our centralized curriculum.
- Material
- Technical
- Perceptual
- Conceptual
Material
Students have access to a wide variety of brushes with both natural and synthetic bristles in various shapes and sizes. Paint, painting mediums, various sprays and varnishes and a whole other array of materials are available to students.
Providing access to the best materials is important in a learning environment. Inferior quality supplies will definitely hinder the learning process and make understanding the technical aspects of art making much more difficult.
Technical
We get a lot of questions that involve the technical aspects of making a picture…how to hold a pencil or brush? How to shade? How to make different kinds of brush strokes, how to blend paint? etc. Most schools refuse to teach these things due to the fact that they claim that it will “kill student creativity”.
We counter this idea with a simple question: Imagine someone who wants to express themselves musically by playing the violin. Is it not paramount to learn how to play the instrument correctly before they give their first recital? Can you imagine how horrid they would sound with no training?
Why is visual art different? We don’t think it is. That’s why we’ll work hard to give you a solid technical foundation from which to grow as an artist.
Perceptual
The main goal of the studio is to teach students how to represent what they see in the world around them. To do this effectively, students must learn how to sharpen their powers of observation so that they can accurately translate the three dimensional world we see onto a flat surface, be it a canvas or paper.
Beginning students are often discouraged by their inital attempts to draw and paint realistically. They can often see that something is wrong with their work, but they can’t put their finger on what exactly they need to do to fix it.
At Classical Realism Singapore we teach the time honoured technique of sighting. Once students understand how to check the accuracy of their drawing and painting, they are able to better assess what they need to do to improve their mistakes.
Conceptual
The conceptual aspect of realistic drawing and painting is extremely important. Strangely enough, an artist simply can’t rely on their eyes alone to guide them in making a convincing work of realism. Students at our studio gain an understanding of how to think about what they are seeing in order to better represent it.
We give comprehensive instruction on traditional ways of rationalizing form, space, perspective and light. These ideas, coming from the Renaissance, play an important role in making a picture look “3D”.
