My drawing lessons and painting lessons in Amsterdam city centre are private, although I agree to teach to couples or small groups.
What I like to offer is what I would have liked to receive during the limited painting instruction I once signed up for, and which to my mind did no deliver. Given that I have a house studio, this allows me to deal with 1 or 2 people at a time.
Most painting classes have you come to an atelier or studio and paint away. The price may be per lesson or per 'course' and you are told that you can get 10 three-hour lessons for 300 Euro. You do the math in your head and think "WOW, I'm paying only 10 Euro per hour to learn how to paint!"
That's the first mistake. In reality, you're paying 10 Euro per hour to paint somewhere and receive occasional (and perhaps very good) advice on how to do it. These are not 30 hours of learning, they are 30 hours of painting or practicing. It is not the same thing.
This distinction is crucial, when you start to realize just what a time consuming activity drawing and painting can be. I will say this as clearly and plainly as I can: It makes absolutely no sense to put in the practice hours while at the same time paying someone.
This is the first reason that my Amsterdam painting lessons and drawing classes are private. They separate learning time from practice time. No need to pay me while you're taking all the time in the world and doing things you already know how to do. Do that on your own (literally) free time. The time you pay for, next to an instructor, should be spent making the most out of what this person knows, asking all the questions, discussing the work, learning a new technique and how to apply it, etc.
The drawing and painting you actually do during these lessons is focused on the learning of one specific thing or technique. You try the technique out, see if it works and figure things out with the help of the experts. Then you practice it on your own time.
Compare this idea with that of learning how to play a musical instrument. You don't pay a teacher to come over and ring away at your guitar for 3 hours. You sit down, discuss and learn what needs to be learned and then during the days between lessons you do all the ringing away and the practicing.
The second reason why my Amsterdam painting lessons are private, is that of positive criticism.
Not everyone knows how to give it, and not everyone knows how to get it, but it is a crucial part of improving. It is well known that you must become your harshest critic and the great masters of art always were. If you let things go, and cut yourself slack, the results may not be as good as they would otherwise.
A few things tend to happen during a painting lesson with this regard. Other members of the class may be too encouraging to keep things nice, or perhaps each will have a totally different opinion about what to make our work improve. You may not be comfortable receiving criticism from them or from the teacher in that setting. Finally, you may begin to compare your work to that of others and draw unwarranted conclusions about your own talent and capabilities.
In a private setting, you can openly discuss the bits you find challenging and receive a stern criticism about your work from someone who is an expert and who's job it is to raise your artistic level, without the risk of feeling like you came short. You are there to learn.
Then there is the obvious stuff during painting lessons, such as the fact that the teacher's attention is solely dedicated to your work, you can choose your subject with more flexibility and even call the shots about when and how to take a break.
Contrary to the social and fun idea we have about painting lessons, an atelier with practicing artists is usually as quite as a mausoleum for most of the time. The painting 'lessons' with a real social value, such as the 'wine and pallet' types are great fun but you will not make great progress beyond what you already know.
Anyway, that's my take on the whole private lessons bit!
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Monday, August 12, 2013
Drawing Lessons in Amsterdam, Things I Don't Do and Why
If you're planning to take some drawing lessons in Amsterdam, it's handy to know what techniques and ideas are available with your teachers of choice.
Perhaps it's fair to begin with the techniques and styles that I personally do not cover in my drawing lessons just to make sure expectations are correct. I will try to give the reasons behind some of the choices in my drawing techniques so far and hopefully it all makes sense and gives you something to consider in your own artistic development.
The first style I do not practice, or endorse in my drawing lessons is that of the fast poses or ultra quick sketches. I have a couple of reasons for this. First of which is the fact that I'm very slow when it comes to drawing. The moment I speed things up, results start to suffer badly to my eyes.
There is also something contradictory about trying to draw as quickly as you can. If you are looking for hobbies involving speed, then you would be well advised to steer clear of drawing and painting, which most masters will agree, are all about slowing down. If you stick to the speedy approach, especially in the beginning, you will rob yourself of the chance to develop your eye for detail. Your visual sensibility will not change and you'll keep churning out the same doodles year after year.
I have seen this in some painting acquaintances of mine, which only after 25 years of painting (a lifetime indeed) they discovered there is such thing as lights and darks, and how to see them correctly!! It took me about 2 weeks to discover this and another 6 months to a year to practice it and understand what it really means.
However, if you put a time pressure to this practice, the depth of your understanding will be very superficial indeed and your art will show it.
See by comparison what the most well-regarded academic schools apply during their drawing lessons. One of the techniques is called long poses. In long poses, the same model poses in the same light and the same position not for hours or days, but indeed for weeks. The students analyze the outline of the form, the way shadows turn around limbs, and every day, further nuance is discovered and reflected on their work.
Let's make no apologies here, this kind of drawing lesson is not the most exciting and to someone walking into a room in dead silence where everyone is creating the same perfect rendering for weeks on end, it would seem more like an autistic clinic than an art school. However there is a purpose to this, which I mentioned above. Developing visual acuteness and sensibility to a level above what other people can see.
I have engaged in such long studies myself and found them to be invaluable:
The second type of drawing that I do not practice or teach in my drawing lessons is the ink line drawing style. The reason is I get extremely nervous about making a line that I cannot delete later. I have tried and every time the result is somewhere between the pathetic and the irrelevant.
Contrary to my comments on the previous style of fast sketches, the art of line in ink is one that has only shrank in popularity, including it's availability in drawing lessons, and which can be an exquisite form of drawing in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. I wish I can learn this myself.
Given the fact that most of my studies and practice have been to try and achieve realism, which is an excellent way to learn how to draw and in turn paint, I also know little about illustrative type of drawing. By this I mean the type that you can make without necessarily looking at the subject. this would include cartoon drawing, inventing characters or settings, and basically doodling to a high level all from your head.
This last area is one that has really caught my attention lately and which I would love to include in my drawing lessons. The reason for this is that I see illustrators as people who have a highly developed visual intelligence, which is not so much perceptive but perhaps more mental or imaginative. They can dream up a subject and then render it realistically any way they want. I envy that capacity and indeed wonder how it may be developed.
They also work at speed, which I criticized so much at the beginning of this article, but their speed is the cherry on top of years of dedicated studies of form and light and therefore they have a license for it.
Good illustrators are in a word for me, the monarchs of the visual arts, able to compose, draw and manage light any way they want and do so in relatively short periods of time. Whenever one of them breaks out of their usual work and produces fine art, he or she is usually met with great acclaim.
I'm sure that academic drawing lessons is part of all their education and therefore a valuable tool for all of us to use!
Perhaps it's fair to begin with the techniques and styles that I personally do not cover in my drawing lessons just to make sure expectations are correct. I will try to give the reasons behind some of the choices in my drawing techniques so far and hopefully it all makes sense and gives you something to consider in your own artistic development.
The first style I do not practice, or endorse in my drawing lessons is that of the fast poses or ultra quick sketches. I have a couple of reasons for this. First of which is the fact that I'm very slow when it comes to drawing. The moment I speed things up, results start to suffer badly to my eyes.
There is also something contradictory about trying to draw as quickly as you can. If you are looking for hobbies involving speed, then you would be well advised to steer clear of drawing and painting, which most masters will agree, are all about slowing down. If you stick to the speedy approach, especially in the beginning, you will rob yourself of the chance to develop your eye for detail. Your visual sensibility will not change and you'll keep churning out the same doodles year after year.
I have seen this in some painting acquaintances of mine, which only after 25 years of painting (a lifetime indeed) they discovered there is such thing as lights and darks, and how to see them correctly!! It took me about 2 weeks to discover this and another 6 months to a year to practice it and understand what it really means.
However, if you put a time pressure to this practice, the depth of your understanding will be very superficial indeed and your art will show it.
See by comparison what the most well-regarded academic schools apply during their drawing lessons. One of the techniques is called long poses. In long poses, the same model poses in the same light and the same position not for hours or days, but indeed for weeks. The students analyze the outline of the form, the way shadows turn around limbs, and every day, further nuance is discovered and reflected on their work.
Let's make no apologies here, this kind of drawing lesson is not the most exciting and to someone walking into a room in dead silence where everyone is creating the same perfect rendering for weeks on end, it would seem more like an autistic clinic than an art school. However there is a purpose to this, which I mentioned above. Developing visual acuteness and sensibility to a level above what other people can see.
I have engaged in such long studies myself and found them to be invaluable:
The second type of drawing that I do not practice or teach in my drawing lessons is the ink line drawing style. The reason is I get extremely nervous about making a line that I cannot delete later. I have tried and every time the result is somewhere between the pathetic and the irrelevant.
Contrary to my comments on the previous style of fast sketches, the art of line in ink is one that has only shrank in popularity, including it's availability in drawing lessons, and which can be an exquisite form of drawing in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. I wish I can learn this myself.
Given the fact that most of my studies and practice have been to try and achieve realism, which is an excellent way to learn how to draw and in turn paint, I also know little about illustrative type of drawing. By this I mean the type that you can make without necessarily looking at the subject. this would include cartoon drawing, inventing characters or settings, and basically doodling to a high level all from your head.
This last area is one that has really caught my attention lately and which I would love to include in my drawing lessons. The reason for this is that I see illustrators as people who have a highly developed visual intelligence, which is not so much perceptive but perhaps more mental or imaginative. They can dream up a subject and then render it realistically any way they want. I envy that capacity and indeed wonder how it may be developed.
They also work at speed, which I criticized so much at the beginning of this article, but their speed is the cherry on top of years of dedicated studies of form and light and therefore they have a license for it.
Good illustrators are in a word for me, the monarchs of the visual arts, able to compose, draw and manage light any way they want and do so in relatively short periods of time. Whenever one of them breaks out of their usual work and produces fine art, he or she is usually met with great acclaim.
I'm sure that academic drawing lessons is part of all their education and therefore a valuable tool for all of us to use!
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Drawing Classes in Amsterdam, for the Patient Painter
My academic drawing classes in Amsterdam for beginners and intermediate artists who wish to learn the way the old masters learned the craft.
When joining a drawing class in the academic style you may discover that some of your ideas about how to draw, and whether you were born to do it or not are not exactly correct. In a sense everybody was born to draw, and nobody was born to draw.
The most brilliant draftsmen (drawing artists) from the past, some of which indeed lived in Amsterdam, reached the level they did, not through flairs of genius which was obvious from an early age. It's almost guaranteed that their first doodles were as poor as those of everyone else who wanted to learn drawing. The difference is that they didn't reach any wrong conclusions from this, other than the obvious one: they had never done it before, and therefore, a bad result was inevitable.
Turn the clock forward 3 or 4 centuries and the image of the artist shifted from that of a craftsman to that of a creative bohemian. I find this to be a terrible idea, especially for people considering to take drawing classes. They may give things a try, and when their drawings are not brilliant and effortless, the conclusion is: "Oh well, I guess I'm just not the artistic type".
The title I used in this entry, the 'patient painter' stands for someone who above all is willing to put in the time and the effort, and go the distance. The only failed drawing is the one that you consider finished before it reaches a standard that you consider excellent, whether produced by yourself or somebody else.
Many of the discussions in my drawing classes in Amsterdam, will revolve around the idea of measuring thoroughly, slowing down, using your lines and tools carefully in the beginning, almost as if you were planning a crime. Did I mention slowing down?
Take for example the portrait of a religious man which I made in a visit to my home country of Guatemala this past march:
I frankly don't recall how many hours it took to create, but I do know it did not happen in one afternoon. It took days of careful observation, of letting the work 'rest' and coming back the next morning with a fresh pair of eyes and also trying different compositional decisions of lines, values, edges and atmosphere, all of which you will learn in my Amsterdam drawing lessons, and which are difficult to crack in a couple of sessions, unless you are an accomplished master with decades of drawing under your belt.
This is one of the reasons that during my drawing classes in Amsterdam I strongly encourage people to carefully choose what they want to draw. It has to be something that keeps you motivated to give your best and stick to it as long as humanly possible. Until it is perfect and not a moment less.
What you will find during the drawing lessons, is that the secret behind amazing works of draftsmanship has little to do with old secrets or artistic genius. It's just plain old hard work, and some techniques that should be always kept in mind.
So I guess the bad news is that it's not easy, but the good news is that anyone can do it!
When joining a drawing class in the academic style you may discover that some of your ideas about how to draw, and whether you were born to do it or not are not exactly correct. In a sense everybody was born to draw, and nobody was born to draw.
The most brilliant draftsmen (drawing artists) from the past, some of which indeed lived in Amsterdam, reached the level they did, not through flairs of genius which was obvious from an early age. It's almost guaranteed that their first doodles were as poor as those of everyone else who wanted to learn drawing. The difference is that they didn't reach any wrong conclusions from this, other than the obvious one: they had never done it before, and therefore, a bad result was inevitable.
Turn the clock forward 3 or 4 centuries and the image of the artist shifted from that of a craftsman to that of a creative bohemian. I find this to be a terrible idea, especially for people considering to take drawing classes. They may give things a try, and when their drawings are not brilliant and effortless, the conclusion is: "Oh well, I guess I'm just not the artistic type".
The title I used in this entry, the 'patient painter' stands for someone who above all is willing to put in the time and the effort, and go the distance. The only failed drawing is the one that you consider finished before it reaches a standard that you consider excellent, whether produced by yourself or somebody else.
Many of the discussions in my drawing classes in Amsterdam, will revolve around the idea of measuring thoroughly, slowing down, using your lines and tools carefully in the beginning, almost as if you were planning a crime. Did I mention slowing down?
Take for example the portrait of a religious man which I made in a visit to my home country of Guatemala this past march:
I frankly don't recall how many hours it took to create, but I do know it did not happen in one afternoon. It took days of careful observation, of letting the work 'rest' and coming back the next morning with a fresh pair of eyes and also trying different compositional decisions of lines, values, edges and atmosphere, all of which you will learn in my Amsterdam drawing lessons, and which are difficult to crack in a couple of sessions, unless you are an accomplished master with decades of drawing under your belt.
This is one of the reasons that during my drawing classes in Amsterdam I strongly encourage people to carefully choose what they want to draw. It has to be something that keeps you motivated to give your best and stick to it as long as humanly possible. Until it is perfect and not a moment less.
What you will find during the drawing lessons, is that the secret behind amazing works of draftsmanship has little to do with old secrets or artistic genius. It's just plain old hard work, and some techniques that should be always kept in mind.
So I guess the bad news is that it's not easy, but the good news is that anyone can do it!
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Painting Classes in Amsterdam
Hi all,
Like I mentioned in my previous post, I've started offering private painting lessons in Amsterdam, right in the center of the city in my canal studio/house.
To satisfy lord Google's need for lots of text about my website, and also help you understand my approach in some more detail, I'll be creating some posts about the whole thing here in my blog and if anyone has questions, you can always call me with the contact details provided on my website:
www.juanpablobran.com/lessons.html
The painting classes I offer are not for everyone. Many art enthusiasts think of painting lessons as a place where you go and explore things around. This is no doubt a lot of fun and I've done it myself, but the results were not to my satisfaction. The artistic results I mean, the socializing was great!
So these Amsterdam painting classes are much more focused and structured and the value you get in return is the ability to start producing art that you may not have though possible before.
One of the thing my painting classes do, and which may be disappointing is to start with the very basics of drawing. So for those who want to waltz in and start putting brushes to a canvas, I do apologize in advance. Not gonna happen.
Why? Well, it was stated at the entrance of the old French Academy of Art in Paris: "Well drawn is well painted". Painting schools in Amsterdam may not have had this inscribed at their entrance, which may explain why there's lots of old masters and very few new ones!
Trying to paint while dragging around sloppy drawing skills is painful to do and painful to witness. So painting lessons begin with making sure your drawing skills are really solid. Even if you have been drawing for some time, there is great benefit from learning the academic approach. It provides you a foundation on which to fall upon when things are not going the way you expect.
My webpage on painting classes provides you with a quick glimpse of what this means:
www.juanpablobran.com/lessons.html
So what are interesting positive points of an Amsterdam painting class which is based on the classical methods:
1. It gives you a foundation to learn painting, which is easy to learn by anyone regardless of background, personality or talent
2. It breaks down the creation of an artwork into small and easy to execute steps which make it possible to learn to paint anything you like and do it very well
3. It demystifies art and allows you to look at it as a craft with tools, techniques and a language that every painting class should be teaching before anything else
4. The paintings of the masters will become more understandable to you, and not less but in fact more amazing and enjoyable
5. You will create the art you want, at the level you decide. You will be able to become the best critic of your work, because you will know which aspects to look for.
6. You will be able to draw and paint any subject, in almost any style you choose.
Now, before I start to sound like a snake oil salesmen, I must say that learning the method and practicing it is hard work. That is both good and bad news. It means anyone who's willing to work at it can do it, but the work has to be done thoroughly.
So that's today's post about this. My website contains some image examples of the art I produce thanks to this method, as well as some steps followed in their creation.
Come visit soon!
Like I mentioned in my previous post, I've started offering private painting lessons in Amsterdam, right in the center of the city in my canal studio/house.
To satisfy lord Google's need for lots of text about my website, and also help you understand my approach in some more detail, I'll be creating some posts about the whole thing here in my blog and if anyone has questions, you can always call me with the contact details provided on my website:
www.juanpablobran.com/lessons.html
The painting classes I offer are not for everyone. Many art enthusiasts think of painting lessons as a place where you go and explore things around. This is no doubt a lot of fun and I've done it myself, but the results were not to my satisfaction. The artistic results I mean, the socializing was great!
So these Amsterdam painting classes are much more focused and structured and the value you get in return is the ability to start producing art that you may not have though possible before.
One of the thing my painting classes do, and which may be disappointing is to start with the very basics of drawing. So for those who want to waltz in and start putting brushes to a canvas, I do apologize in advance. Not gonna happen.
Why? Well, it was stated at the entrance of the old French Academy of Art in Paris: "Well drawn is well painted". Painting schools in Amsterdam may not have had this inscribed at their entrance, which may explain why there's lots of old masters and very few new ones!
Trying to paint while dragging around sloppy drawing skills is painful to do and painful to witness. So painting lessons begin with making sure your drawing skills are really solid. Even if you have been drawing for some time, there is great benefit from learning the academic approach. It provides you a foundation on which to fall upon when things are not going the way you expect.
My webpage on painting classes provides you with a quick glimpse of what this means:
www.juanpablobran.com/lessons.html
So what are interesting positive points of an Amsterdam painting class which is based on the classical methods:
1. It gives you a foundation to learn painting, which is easy to learn by anyone regardless of background, personality or talent
2. It breaks down the creation of an artwork into small and easy to execute steps which make it possible to learn to paint anything you like and do it very well
3. It demystifies art and allows you to look at it as a craft with tools, techniques and a language that every painting class should be teaching before anything else
4. The paintings of the masters will become more understandable to you, and not less but in fact more amazing and enjoyable
5. You will create the art you want, at the level you decide. You will be able to become the best critic of your work, because you will know which aspects to look for.
6. You will be able to draw and paint any subject, in almost any style you choose.
Now, before I start to sound like a snake oil salesmen, I must say that learning the method and practicing it is hard work. That is both good and bad news. It means anyone who's willing to work at it can do it, but the work has to be done thoroughly.
So that's today's post about this. My website contains some image examples of the art I produce thanks to this method, as well as some steps followed in their creation.
Come visit soon!
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Art Lessons in Amsterdam, Classical Drawing and Painting
Learning to draw and paint in Amsterdam, following the style and principles of the old masters should be readily available, one would think.
However, as some of my earlier posts will tell you, this is currently not the case. The availability of instruction that focuses on the classical way of learning art is extremely scarce. I myself found this while trying to learn to draw and paint, and I had to rely on internet downloads and the purchase of foreign (mostly American and British) books to learn the craft.
Since then not much has changed and I was surprised to see this confirmed in the latest issue of Palet magazine, which comments how Florence in Italy, for example, boasts a classical atelier-type art school which Amsterdam could only dream of nowadays.
So, being one to take matters into my own hands, I now offer art lessons in Amsterdam on a private basis via my website:
http://juanpablobran.com/lessons.html
Now, even though the website tells you all about it, lord Google demands that I write and write on the subject so that my website is considered worthy of appearing somewhere near page one, so in this post I will tell you something about the principles and the process.
One of the first things you will notice about my painting lessons in Amsterdam is that they are private, mostly.
The reason for this, is that I'm not the lucky owner or unlucky tenant of a nice studio or atelier. I work from home, and I'm proud to say that my kitchen counter has produced good art. This is not something I'm ashamed of, in fact I'm proud of it, and it is a more real and feasible scenario for 99% of people out there than a large beautiful studio with North light coming in.
This means your Amsterdam drawing or painting lessons will take place at my home, your home or when the weather allows, outdoors at a nice location.
The second reason my painting classes in Amsterdam are private is because I'm no certified teacher and to tell the truth, I would not know how to deal with a group. The logistics of it alone make me nervous and I don't feel like spending a lot of time organizing, scheduling and coordinating. I like to draw, paint and focus on the task at hand.
Next thing to say about these new little Amsterdam art classes is the style that I practice and intend to teach. The style is strictly academic. A quick look at my website www.juanpablobran.com will show you I'm currently focused on classical realism. This is not to say other styles are less interesting, less worthy or that my own artistic style will not change later. However if you want to produce beautiful art, you have to learn the visual principles, and I'm convinced that these principles are best learned in an Amsterdam painting course that sticks to the classics.
Why?
Because they were bloody good. They discovered (or invented) color, composition, drawing and painting techniques that hit a solid cord on our human notion of esthetics. You are well adviced to study why this is and learn how to use it. If you don't you are tossing a coin hoping to get lucky and the odds are so dramatically stacked against you that the result is almost always guaranteed to fall very short of your potential, if it's not downright ugly.
This is my own personal opinion anyway.
But lets look at what this approach of art classes can achieve, rather than what it avoids. What it does is to remove the element of 'talent' out of the equation. The normal art enthusiast has this expectation that a creative personality is necessary to create good art, and that trying random stuff results in good art if you have the right genes.
The academic approach takes your drawing and painting to a totally different level, in a very short period of time because it starts from a completely different standpoint. It uses a number of very simple and proven ideas, which when properly used and combined, produce amazing results that anybody can achieve.
My Amsterdam painting lessons take this as a starting point, and I really do believe this can make a difference in the level that you can reach with your art.
You may not believe this but I only started to draw in August 2012. Before that I could only draw smileys and stick men. Now you may not have the same amount of time on your hands, the same knack for method or visual acuity, which is where taking lessons comes in handy, but if you live in Amsterdam and you want to become an artist whether it is drawing or painting, my lessons can help you get that underway.
One integral part of the painting classes I offer in Amsterdam is knowing the masters. In itself, Amsterdam lends itself perfectly to anyone who wants to study how art, drawing and painting is done to the highest levels. The Rijksmuseum just re-opened. The Hermitage, the van Gogh, are all places where we can go and figure out how it's really done.
However, to learn how to draw and paint in Amsterdam, there is visiting a museum and there is visiting a museum. What are we looking for when we see a piece of art? We want to evaluate every aspect that makes it good, both from a distance and up close.
Hope this initial post gets you interested, my contact details are on the website and we can discuss at length your artistic ambitions and how I can help you reach them!
However, as some of my earlier posts will tell you, this is currently not the case. The availability of instruction that focuses on the classical way of learning art is extremely scarce. I myself found this while trying to learn to draw and paint, and I had to rely on internet downloads and the purchase of foreign (mostly American and British) books to learn the craft.
Since then not much has changed and I was surprised to see this confirmed in the latest issue of Palet magazine, which comments how Florence in Italy, for example, boasts a classical atelier-type art school which Amsterdam could only dream of nowadays.
So, being one to take matters into my own hands, I now offer art lessons in Amsterdam on a private basis via my website:
http://juanpablobran.com/lessons.html
Now, even though the website tells you all about it, lord Google demands that I write and write on the subject so that my website is considered worthy of appearing somewhere near page one, so in this post I will tell you something about the principles and the process.
One of the first things you will notice about my painting lessons in Amsterdam is that they are private, mostly.
The reason for this, is that I'm not the lucky owner or unlucky tenant of a nice studio or atelier. I work from home, and I'm proud to say that my kitchen counter has produced good art. This is not something I'm ashamed of, in fact I'm proud of it, and it is a more real and feasible scenario for 99% of people out there than a large beautiful studio with North light coming in.
This means your Amsterdam drawing or painting lessons will take place at my home, your home or when the weather allows, outdoors at a nice location.
The second reason my painting classes in Amsterdam are private is because I'm no certified teacher and to tell the truth, I would not know how to deal with a group. The logistics of it alone make me nervous and I don't feel like spending a lot of time organizing, scheduling and coordinating. I like to draw, paint and focus on the task at hand.
Next thing to say about these new little Amsterdam art classes is the style that I practice and intend to teach. The style is strictly academic. A quick look at my website www.juanpablobran.com will show you I'm currently focused on classical realism. This is not to say other styles are less interesting, less worthy or that my own artistic style will not change later. However if you want to produce beautiful art, you have to learn the visual principles, and I'm convinced that these principles are best learned in an Amsterdam painting course that sticks to the classics.
Why?
Because they were bloody good. They discovered (or invented) color, composition, drawing and painting techniques that hit a solid cord on our human notion of esthetics. You are well adviced to study why this is and learn how to use it. If you don't you are tossing a coin hoping to get lucky and the odds are so dramatically stacked against you that the result is almost always guaranteed to fall very short of your potential, if it's not downright ugly.
This is my own personal opinion anyway.
But lets look at what this approach of art classes can achieve, rather than what it avoids. What it does is to remove the element of 'talent' out of the equation. The normal art enthusiast has this expectation that a creative personality is necessary to create good art, and that trying random stuff results in good art if you have the right genes.
The academic approach takes your drawing and painting to a totally different level, in a very short period of time because it starts from a completely different standpoint. It uses a number of very simple and proven ideas, which when properly used and combined, produce amazing results that anybody can achieve.
My Amsterdam painting lessons take this as a starting point, and I really do believe this can make a difference in the level that you can reach with your art.
You may not believe this but I only started to draw in August 2012. Before that I could only draw smileys and stick men. Now you may not have the same amount of time on your hands, the same knack for method or visual acuity, which is where taking lessons comes in handy, but if you live in Amsterdam and you want to become an artist whether it is drawing or painting, my lessons can help you get that underway.
One integral part of the painting classes I offer in Amsterdam is knowing the masters. In itself, Amsterdam lends itself perfectly to anyone who wants to study how art, drawing and painting is done to the highest levels. The Rijksmuseum just re-opened. The Hermitage, the van Gogh, are all places where we can go and figure out how it's really done.
However, to learn how to draw and paint in Amsterdam, there is visiting a museum and there is visiting a museum. What are we looking for when we see a piece of art? We want to evaluate every aspect that makes it good, both from a distance and up close.
Hope this initial post gets you interested, my contact details are on the website and we can discuss at length your artistic ambitions and how I can help you reach them!
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