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You Are Invited!

LAAFAStudentBlog

LAAFA is an accredited private college offering 3-Year BFA Degree and Certificate Programs, as well as 1-year to 18-month Intensive Art Training Tracks. We invite prospective students to come and see our intimate artistic environment and audit a full-time class.  Students can have a glimpse of the personal attention they will receive by instructors and staff during a visit. For our out-of-town prospective students, we encourage a SKYPE meeting.  These are some of the great ways to ask questions and find out more information about the LAAFA experience.

CLICK HERE TO SCHEDULE A TOUR!

At LAAFA, you will learn from world-class faculty who work for top animation, film tv studios and gaming companies, as well as exhibit in major galleries around the world.  Our faculty will give you the practical training experience needed to be successful in your chosen career path.

Fall applications are currently being accepted for FALL 2016!  <<APPLY NOW >>

Artwork by:  Rohini Sen, Katie Lindsay, Christine Vanderkaap and Gabriel Shiguemoto.

 

 

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2016 Spring Complimentary Demonstrations

DemosSpring
Come, Learn and Enjoy!

Come and watch our instructors in action on the first day of class.  These complimentary demonstrations allow you to step inside the minds of these skilled artists and engage in conversation about the creative process and passion for art-marking.  In addition, receive information on instructors’ favorite tools, mediums and materials! No reservation required. Availability is on a first-come, first-serve basis. Students currently enrolled in class have preferred seating and may be invited to draw or paint during the demo.

Thursday – April 14th
Figure Painting (Zorn Palette) with Vadim Zang | 10am to 2:30pm

Friday – April 15th
Understanding the Figure with Daniel Bilmes | 10am to 3:30pm

Saturday – April 16th
Drawing and Painting Fundamentals with Van Saro | 9am to 12pm
Beginning Portrait Drawing with Jonny Hart | 2pm to 5pm

Artwork by:  Vadim Zang, Daniel Bilmes, Van Saro and Jonny Hart.

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Los Angeles Art Workshops

We are thrilled to offer the best art workshops taught by highly acclaimed local and visiting artists!  Students worldwide can come to LAAFA and learn techniques, receive valuable instruction, feedback and critiques.  Plus, working alongside your favorite artist is priceless.  Please visit the full list of workshops currently available. Be sure to check back often for new workshops added to our schedule.

Images provided by:  Sean Cheetham, Ruo Li, Qiang Huang, Stephen Early, Alex Oliver, Christopher Pugliese, Carlo Russo, Max Ginsburg and Iliya Mirochnik.

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Accepting Fine & Entertainment Art Applications | Fall 2013

The Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art (LAAFA) is accepting applications for our Fall full-time degree and atelier programs.  LAAFA is considered a premier choice for students wanting an intensive art program that provides the necessary foundation skills allowing our students to apply these fundamentals to a career in the fine art or entertainment art industry.

Key components of our admissions process:

1.     Apply to the full-time program.

2.    Follow all the Admission Requirements.
2A.  International Students.

3.   Portfolio pieces including the required drawing need to be sent in JPEG format (each image approximately 1280 x 800).
A.  Create a zip folder with your first initial and full last name.
B.  Email to the Admissions Department.

4.  Tuition payments and Financial Aid options.

5.  Once we have received a students’ completed application, it will take approximately 10 to 14-days for a reply.

6.  If accepted into our program, students are eligible to apply for our scholarship program.

LAAFA operates on a rolling admissions basis. Prospective students are reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis for the next available starting quarter.  LAAFA only accepts a small number of students to the program each year.   We hope you will consider LAAFA as the start of your artistic journey.  To make an appointment to tour the campus, please contact our Director of Admissions.

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Ecorche/3D Anatomy w/ Rey Bustos – Weeks 6-9

“Muscle Memory”

During weeks 6 through 9 in Ecorche with Rey Bustos at LAAFA we added “musculature” to our ecorches. Using “chocolate” Sculpey, we crafted each muscle according to helpful guidelines Rey provided for us.

 

With Rey’s detailed drawings and demonstrations to lead us in the right direction, we worked our way up the body, all the way from lower leg, through the abdomen and upper body to the facial muscles.

 

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of Ecorche with Rey Bustos at LAAFA in our upcoming Week 10 blog post.

 

 

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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

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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)

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Ecorche/3D Anatomy w/ Rey Bustos – Spray Paint & Varnish

One of the most transformational parts of Ecorche with Rey Bustos at LAAFA was spray painting the baked ecorche.  I was careful to mask the hand and foot that I wanted to remain the fleshy color of Sculpey with aluminum foil before painting.  You can see below how a light coat of off-white spray paint really shows off all the sculpting work that goes into the skeletal portion of the ecorche.

In class, Rey had a “varnishing station’ set up for us. We lightly brushed varnish over our spray painted ecorches. We only applied the varnish to the left side, the side that will remain as exposed skeleton. We left the right side coated with spray paint only, so the clay we apply to represent muscles will stick. The effect of the varnish over the spray paint is fantastic- don’t you think?

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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.

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Ecorche/3D Anatomy w/ Rey Bustos – Week 5

I can’t believe we have already reached the halfway point- week 5 in Ecorche with Rey Bustos at LAAFA!  Class number five focused largely on process, as this week’s tasks were to complete the skeletal body and “bake” the ecorche to permanently harden the Sculpey.

In class, Rey demonstrated how to finish the delicate bones of the lower arm, the radius and the ulna.  Rey recommended stringing the tiny finger bones onto the wire like beads. This simple technique creates a sophisticated skeletal model of the
human hand.

For the fleshed out right hand, Rey drew us a diagram of the palm. He encouraged us to make our ecorches’ hands expressive, and to add creases, or flexure lines, for a lifelike effect.  Everyone had more than enough armature wire to support the fingers on each hand.
We just cut off what we didn’t need after
completing both hands.

The next lecture topic was Rey’s favorite bone: the scapula.  I have to admit, floating like wings on the human back, scapulae are beautiful bones.  Rey showed us how to mold the organic protrusions that define the scapulae. He also showed us how to attach the left scapula so that only the socket, or glenoid fossa rests against the head of the humerus. As you can see, this was a well-documented moment of the class. 😉

Back at home, I carefully followed the written instructions Rey gave us on baking our ecorches. Behold! Five weeks of sculpting permanently set in polymer clay! Now, before adding the muscles, all I have to do is paint and varnish the bones.
I’ll post an update on the painting and finishing process soon!

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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!

 

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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.

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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.

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