Last Chance! DreamWorks Artist, Marcos Mateu Lecture This Weekend

             

 

Visual Narrative and the Graphic Novel Lecture

          Marcos Mateu | February 27th | 3pm-6pm

Marcos will lecture on visual storytelling and graphic novel, talking about practical principles of the art while showing and commenting on a lot of material from both 'Framed Ink' and 'Trail of Steel:1441 A.D.’ Lecture will be interactive! 

  Enroll Now For Only $50!

Bio:  Marcos Mateu-Matre was born in Palma de Mallorca. He has been working in animation since 1991 (2D backgrounds, 2D layout, storyboard, visual concept and development).  Marcos is also the author of “Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers” and graphic novel, “Trail Of Steel: 1441 A.D”. He is currently working as a visual development artist at DreamWorks. His film credits include: We’re Back, Balto, The Prince of Egypt, Eldorado, 3 Wise Men, Toto Sapore, Asterix and the Vikings, Surf’s Up, Megamind, Puss In Boots and How to Train Your Dragon 2.

Entertainment Art Student Graduation Exhibition

Mark your calendar to stop by and show your support for our recent Entertainment Art graduates. We wish them much success in their journey as artists!

Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Avenue, Building G – Space 8A
Santa Monica, CA 90404
May 11th, 6pm to 9pm

Awesome Announcements at LAAFA

New Website

We recently launched our new website! Please visit us at your convenience and see all the wonderful improvements we have made to the website. 

Nathan Fowkes Pre-Sale Video

“Drawing the Portrait from Life” – In this 2 1/2 hour full demonstration, renowned artist and veteran teacher Nathan Fowkes gives you step by step instruction on how to successfully draw the portrait from life in charcoal.  This demonstration is digitally downloaded to your favorite MAC or Windows OS computer.  Introductory pre-sale price ends on August 31st.  Download will be made available by September 15th.  Order today and save.

Nathan Fowkes Drawing Workshop - August 18th

This workshop will be an instructive overview of the materials, techniques, and concepts for successful portrait drawing, it will include:

• The fundamentals of constructing the head with the values of light and shadow.
• Principles for creating the illusion of space and volume on a 2 dimensional drawing surface.
• Ideas for portrait composition and creating a likeness.
• Techniques and tips on materials and the drawing process.
• Instructor demonstration from a live model.
• Student drawing time from a live model with instructor feedback.

REGISTER HERE FOR THIS CLASS

August 2012 Workshops at LAAFA

This August at LAAFA, choose between these wonderful workshops - or take them all! 

August 3rd-5th
3-DAY PORTRAITURE PAINTING WORKSHOP

Spend 3 days studying portraiture with Sean Cheetham- one of the most acclaimed young figurative painters today!
Sean holds a Bachelor of Fine Art degree with honors from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. He exhibited his work in 2005 at the Portrait Award National Portrait Gallery in London, England. In 2006, Sean had his first one man exhibition with The Mendenhall Sobieski Gallery in Pasadena.

 

August 11
1-DAY DRAWING AND FILM DESIGN WORKSHOP WITH JOHN NEVAREZ

Developing moments for visual development is key in "showing and selling" the story.  Animation industry veteran John Nevarez will discuss how to compose and design drawings for visual development in film. John will cover design as it relates to supporting story structure.  Basic principles of design for film, including composition and lighting will also be covered.

 

 

August 18

1-DAY PORTRAIT DRAWING IN CHARCOAL WORKSHOP WITH NATHAN FOWKES

This workshop will be an instructive overview of the materials, techniques, and concepts for successful portrait drawing, it will include:

• The fundamentals of constructing the head with the values of light and shadow.
• Principles for creating the illusion of space and volume on a 2 dimensional drawing surface.

• Ideas for portrait composition and creating a likeness.
• Techniques and tips on materials and the drawing process.
• Instructor demonstration from a live model.
• Student drawing time from a live model with instructor feedback.

Can't stay until 8:00 pm? You can opt to attend just the Lecture & Demo portion of this workshop from 12:00pm-5:00pm.

A Week in the Life of LAAFA

This Summer, LAAFA is pleased to present an extraordinary collection of teachers and classes.  Here's a sampling of the exciting classes that are going on every day of the week at LAAFA. 

Ramon Hurtado

MONDAY: Long Pose Figure Drawing with Ramon Hurtado. Starts Monday, July 16.  In this class, students  will focus on creating long pose drawings that capture the specific character of the model.  Throughout nine 15-hour poses, Ramon will emphasize a balance  of 3D forms, anatomy, gesture, shadow patterns, and 2D measuring techniques for students.  The result: drawings that reveal the construction of the figure through the use of tone, and maintain a sense of movement while adding high finish.

Ron Velasco

Ron Lemen

TUESDAY:  On Tuesday evenings, starting July 17th, Ron Velasco will share his entertainment industry experience and gift for developing personality in drawings in Gesture Drawing for Storytelling.  Starting July 31st, from 11:00am to 3:00pm on Tuesdays, Summer Quarter Spotlight Artist Ron Lemen will illuminate the theory of color keys and chromatic concepts for students of all levels.  If you are a painter who wants to take your art to the next level, Life Painting with Focus on Color Theory is a class you don't want to miss!

Mark McDonnell

WEDNESDAY:  Character Design with Mark McDonnell is a chance to for students to design  characters based on a particular style.  The class is designed to give students the experience of "on-the-job situations." Mark will provide reference images for a particular style at the beginning of each session to inspire and guide students' work. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from an animation industry pro - this class starts Wednesday, July 18th!

Vadim Zanginian

THURSDAY:  Anyone interested in either drawing or painting will benefit from Vadim Zanginian's Tonal Figure Drawing class, starting Thursday, July 19th.  Vadim will help students elegantly portray light on the human form using tone, rather than line.

FRIDAY:  Plein Air/Landscape Painting is a class for students who love field trips! Every class meets in a different scenic location, where Sharon Weaver fearlessly guides students in the art of outdoor painting.

Sam Woodfin

SATURDAY:  Starting July 21st, Dynamic Sketching on Location with Sam Woodfin will give students a chance to take their drawing skills to a number of exciting locations outside LAAFA.  Sam will guide students in specific drawing solutions to complex visual problems such as conveying mood, texture, and other specific information about objects and animals.

SUNDAY:  Imaginatomy with Rey Bustos gives students the opportunity to create an animal out of their imagination and learn animal anatomy at the same time! Also on Sundays, starting July 22, Eric Pedersen will be teaching Basic Painting Fundamentals. This class is guaranteed to get you started off on the right foot as a painter, or to help you consolidate prior beginning study.

LAAFA at Comic-Con Part 1: Gearing up for the Weekend

Image by CECIL KIM

Comic-Con is here and LAAFA is right in the middle of the action! 

If you are at Comic-Con, be sure to stop by Booth #5567.  For those of you who won't make it until this weekend, here's a daily photo diary of what's happened so far!  Follow us on Facebook for updates throughout the day on what will be happening for the rest of the weekend!

FRIDAY: ANIMATION VETERAN AND PIXAR SKETCH ARTIST JOHN NEVAREZ  

JOHN DEMONSTRATED DAZZLING SKETCH-WORK AT 3:00PM ON FRIDAY.

   REGISTER FOR JOHN'S VISUAL STORYTELLING WORKSHOP NEXT MONTH AT LAAFA WHILE THERE IS STILL SPACE!

THURSDAY:  CECIL KIM FROM SECTION STUDIOS

 CECIL SHOWED A WINNING COMBINATION OF TECHNICAL MASTERY 

AND IMAGINATION DURING HIS 4:30 PM DEMO

WEDNESDAY:  PREVIEW NIGHT

  ARTIST/ILLUSTRATOR/TEACHER MARSHALL VANDRUFF CAME TO VISIT

Carlo Russo at LAAFA

Last weekend, LAAFA hosted Philadelphia based artist, Carlo Russo  for an intimate 3-Day Still Life Workshop.  During the workshop, Carlo covered his working process in depth for the benefit of seven lucky students.

To make his studio practices accessible to workshop participants, Carlo  broke his still life painting approach into a three-part process.  Carlo's masterful method is inspired by the tradition of French academic painting.  The steps listed below show how the method works in broad strokes.

Intrigued? Follow our blog and be the first to find out about workshops and other events at LAAFA.

You can also see our full class and workshop schedule here.

Step One: Sight- Size Line Drawing

Step Two: the Ebauche or Color Wash

Step Three: Full Value Rendering

LAAFA - Gearing Up for Summer!

 

Summer is here and things are heating up at LAAFA!

(Just an expression, folks - LAAFA's classrooms are climate-controlled. )

2012 Summer Open House Photos

 

On Saturday, June 2, LAAFA's Summer Open House gave prospective and current students a chance to socialize and to enjoy demonstrations by Sharon Weaver and Vadim Zang

Sharon Weaver

Vadim Zanginian

Starting in early July, Sharon will be teaching Plein Air/ Landscaping Painting on Fridays.


Vadim's Summer classes include Head/Figure Painting on Mondays and Tonal Figure Drawing on Thursdays.

 - Books Needed for Art Library -

Please consider donating your art books to LAAFA's art library - coming this fall!

In preparation, we are having a book drive. From now until July 1st, donate your art books to receive a raffle ticket for FREE summer classes! Each book donated gets you one raffle ticket. Raffle winners will be announced July 2nd.

You can drop off your books at the LAAFA office during business hours:

Mondays -Thursdays 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Fridays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Saturdays - Sundays 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Raffle Items:

• One Free Instructed 8-week class (select classes)
• One Free Uninstructed Workshop Pass
• Three Free One Day Instructed class (select classes)

The Librarian, 1566, oil on canvas, Giuseppe Arcimboldo

 

Ramon Hurtado's Long Pose Figure Drawing Class at LAAFA

Ramon Hurtado is teaching a long pose figure drawing class at LAAFA this Summer. The wonderful drawings below show how Ramon works from start to finish. Following the tradition of 19th century academic drawing, the class will focus on creating long pose drawings that capture the specific character of the model. The class will combine knowledge of 3D forms, anatomy, gesture, shadow patterns, and 2D measuring techniques to create drawings that reveal the construction of the figure through the use of tone. Learn more about the class and register here.

Ecorche/3D Anatomy w/ Rey Bustos - Week 4

Week 4 in Ecorche with Rey Bustos at LAAFA was action-packed!

During the first part of class, Rey led students in bending wire to create five-pronged armatures for the right and left hands.  

The design of Rey's ecorche features a moveable left elbow joint, so we made the wire armature for the left forearm and hand as a separate piece. I taped mine to my ecorche's ground for safekeeping.

After a series of neat accordion bends and just one snip with wire-cutters, we had the armature for our ecorches' right hands in place as well.

With the final armature building behind us, we moved on to the triple topic of the day: vertebra-thorax-humeri. In English, that's spine-ribcage-upper arm bones.  

Rey showed us his neat technique for representing the vertebra in a believable way as a group.  Rey guarantees that this "grouped" approach poses less of a risk to mental health than attempting to sculpt each vertebra individually. I can vouch for the technique, but you'll have to take the class to find out what it is. ;-)

Rolling out the ribs and building the support surfaces for future "muscles" on the right side of our ecorches filled the rest of the class.

The support clay on the right side of the ecorche does not represent any anatomical structures in the human body. However, for our ecorches, this support will be necessary when we begin to add muscle to the figures in two weeks. Rey made sure each student's ecorche was on track before dismissing class.

Our homework for the week was to install the support clay, complete the humeri, and finish the ribcage with a sternum. Here's the result of my best efforts:

Ecorche/3D Anatomy w/ Rey Bustos - Week 3

Students in Rey Bustos's Ecorche class at LAAFA started week 3 by covering the wire and nails holding their ecorche upright with clay. This clay was the beginning of the ground our ecorches would come to stand on... after we took care of the small matter of sculpting the 3 bones of the lower leg and the 26 bones of the foot!  Fortunately, Rey's design of the ecorche "fleshes out" the right foot, so in all we only had 33 bones to sculpt.  Now that class is over, and I've completed my homework, I can't believe how much we learned and got done this week!  Rey kept his lecture brief so we would have time to get started on sculpting those 33 bones!

Rey advised that we start with the feet, and then work our way up to the tibia, fibula, and patella that make up the lower leg.  To create the bones of the skeletal foot, Rey advised that we use top-view printed anatomical guides and "draw" the bones into our clay. The method really worked!

Photo by Ryan Patterson

Soon we had our skeletal left feet completed.  Rey demonstrated how to create toes, toenails, and tendons for a lifelike look on the right foot.  As a final touch, he added red calluses and blue-green veins in watercolor paint.





Rey gave a final demonstration to show us how to "cook" the two small bones of the lower leg in hot water.  The fibula is a very thin bone that we will eventually wrap in "muscle" on our ecorches, so we used a wire for support.  The patella (kneecap), however, is not connected to the skeleton by any bony structure, so we used a wire to show the patella's "floating" position.  Check out my ecorche's little left fiblua and patella enjoying their hot bath- aren't they cute? ;-)

Ta-dah! Here is my ecorche's newly completed lower skeleton! Check back next week to see what we learn in week 4!

 

May Workshops at LAAFA with Nathan Fowkes & Marshall Vandruff

On Saturday, May 19th, Nathan Fowkes has a one-day workshop - Composition: Design for Dynamic Picture-Making.  This intensive workshop will cover fundamentals of effective picture-making, creating mood and environment, and organizing complex scenes.  The workshop includes a painting demonstration by Nathan, as well as time for student painting with instructor feedback. Discover Nathan Fowkes's impressive credentials on his blog.  Register here.

May 25th-27th master illustrator and instructor Marshall Vandruff presents a crash-course in the classic approach to draftsmanship and animal anatomy.  The workshop will teach students to draw animals from their imagination as well as to interpret visual information when drawing animals from life. Recommended pre-workshop reading is on Marshall's website.  Register here.

Ecorche/3D Anatomy w/ Rey Bustos - Week 2

 

The hip-bone's connected to the thigh-bone....

Week 2 of Rey Bustos's Ecorche/ 3D Anatomy class at LAAFA introduced the two major bones of the lower body: the pelvis and the femur.

To simplify the daunting task of rendering the pelvis in 3D, Rey started with a less-intimidating concept - a square.  Two squares, actually, drawn together in a rectangle. You can see this rectangle on the blackboard in the photo at right.  So far, so good.



Rey then used the framework of these squares to guide students in drawing the pelvis in 2D.  We drew our own maps of anatomical terrain most of us had only previously used... well... to sit on.  Keeping up with the lecture and Rey's detailed drawing (left) kept us busy!  We learned the five "landmarks" of the pelvis to look for on a live model. In addition, we learned how even the invisible bony bumps under layers of muscle and soft tissue affect the visible parts of the human body.  Good stuff!

When we were ready to start adding the clay "skeleton" to our wire armature, Rey lent a hand and gave a brief demo to get us started.



Then we were on our own!

Moving on to the femur, Rey gave another brief lecture. Since we all now had at least part of the pelvis completed, Rey's approach to the femur emphasized its connectedness to the pelvis and the rest of the skeleton.  Again starting with a simple concept, Rey showed us how to form the head of the femur from a clay "worm" wrapped around our wire armature.  Rey left us on our own to work for the rest of class, but was always on hand to answer questions and provide help.

I can hardly wait for tomorrow's class! Here's my completed Week 2 homework.