Looking for a summer art class? Interested in building your portfoilo? Atelier Hawai‘i is the perfect foundation for art majors. Skills learned are also valuable for New Media Arts majors. Plus, credits are transferrable to UH Mānoa and other colleges and universities.

Atelier Hawai‘i is a 6-week intensive summer workshop focusing on the underlying principles of classical drawing and painting. Students develop a number of two-week projects focused on different aspects of drawing or painting: proportions, anatomical landmarks, value organization, edge hierarchy, color values, temperature control, and how to create a focal point and sense of atmosphere in one’s artwork while working from classical sculptures, still life arrangements and live models.

The course is designed to give students a strong understanding of the fundamentals, then build upon those fundamentals to develop finished oil painting and charcoal drawing portfolio pieces. Each stage of the workshop is designed to build upon the skills and concepts of the previous stage. 

Students work from classical sculptures as well as live figure models using the traditional technique of sight size, an optical measuring technique used by artists throughout history to train their eye as well as accurately measure subjects from life. 

Upon completion, students will produce six pieces ready for portfolio:

• A charcoal and white chalk drawing on toned paper of a classical sculpture cast
• A number of graphite figure sketches from live figure models
• A grisaille painting which explores temperature variation within a still life
• A limited palette figure painting from a live model
• A full palette still life painting
• A full palette portrait painting from a live model

Cast drawing
Students will work from classical plaster casts using the traditional optical measuring technique of sight size to hone their artistic eye. 
They will learn different ways to take accurate measurements from life and how to create a proportionally accurate drawing. 
This project will also introduce student to values, how to control a value range, and how to create a accurate light effect and sense of form.

Grisaille painting
This project will build on what students learned in the cast drawing project while also introducing them to the medium of oil painting. Grisaille refers to a very limited pallet, or monochrome painting technique used to explore values, drawing, and temperature. During this project student will learn how to organize a painting pallet, mix and apply paint, maintain brushes, identify and record temperature variations, and how to tone a canvas. 

Still Life painting
Students will first learn about composition as they work to arrange their still lives and create a focal point. 
This project will teach students how to paint using a full color pallet in a systematic and straight forward way. Skills learned during the grisaille painting project will be expanded upon as we not only examine temperature, but color and saturation as well.

Figure drawing
Students will work both from Master works as well as from live models to learn a systematic approach to accurately blocking in a figure. 
We will be discussing how to balance a figure, recognize and use anatomical landmarks to determine the body’s position in space, and how to set up a portrait properly on a figure drawing. 

Figure painting
Building upon the concepts introduced in the figure drawing section of the course as well as what they have been learning from their painting projects in the mornings, students will now apply what they have learned to painting the figure. 
We will be going over how to mix flesh tones, make a transfer drawing, and how to relate the figure to the background and create as sense of space and atmosphere. 

Portrait painting
With the portrait painting project, we will be working on a systematic way of mapping out the head and facial features while positioning the head correctly in relation to the shoulders of the sitter.