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.

The Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art (LAAFA) recently celebrated a milestone of 10 years in art education. The party was held at the famed Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, CA.  And yes, the band playing in the video is Sean Cheetham’s band, Del Toro.

We have a spectacular line-up of instructors and individual classes this Spring Quarter for our extension students. Take a look at the choices of classes in our Van Nuys location. For students wanting to apply to our 3-Year Program, this is the best time to start your application process. LAAFA is considered a premier choice for students wanting an intensive art program that provides the necessary foundation skills which allow our students to excel and apply these fundamentals to a career in the fine or entertainment art industry.

 

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)

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.

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:

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!

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.

 

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.

Rey Bustos is the wonderful kind of teacher who makes you feel like you are getting your money’s worth out of his class – down to every last penny! Last Sunday, April 15th, Rey’s Ecorche/ 3D Anatomy class at LAAFA started with students arriving 30 to 60 minutes BEFORE the start of class so that Rey could help us all get the main portion of our armature wire bent into shape.

Rey expertly turned yard after yard of straight wire into the basic frame for a 16″ replica of a human statuette or ecorche. In French, ecorche means “flayed” and refers to the fact that a finished ecorche sculpture looks like it has had the skin removed so you can see the muscles and bones.

Our ecorches were only just beginning to take shape. All along the way, Rey guided us in measuring, bending, and wrapping our wire.

After the wire supports for the arms and legs were bent into place, the next task was bending wire to support the clay ribcage we will be building in future classes.  Rey guided students through the first four ribs and assigned the remaining eight as homework for students who couldn’t get them done in class.

Rey provided illustrations of the human ribcage from all angles to guide our wire wrapping and bending.  Even though I thought I knew what a ribcage looked like, looking at the diagrams showed me the human ribcage in more detail that I imagined it could possibly contain.

I realized that there is a big gap between knowing enough to merely identify a ribcage, and the intimate understanding that comes from a tactile experience of its form.  Like an eager student aboard Ms. Frizzle’s Magic School Bus, I can’t wait to see what part of the body Rey will introduce us to next week!

We finished class by securing our wire armatures to 12″ wooden boards with double pointed tacks.  Students with time to spare were able to start rolling their Super Sculpey into sheets to allow it to firm up a bit for next week’s class.

Week 1 of Ecorche/ 3D Anatomy was a lot of work, but the results were satisfying.

We went from this:

        To this:

           
I’ll be posting every week as the Spring 2012 Ecorche/ 3D Anatomy class with Rey Bustos progresses, so stay tuned!

Does your artwork leave you feeling flat?  Pick a remedy from LAAFA’s exciting Spring Quarter schedule!

LAAFA instructor Rey Bustos recommends that students seeking improved drawing and painting skills start their study of anatomy with his 3D Anatomy/ Ecorche’ class, and then follow up with his class in Drawing the Figure.  Bustos says that a tactile, hands-on experience in 3D Anatomy or figure sculpting is an essential basis for convincing figurative work on flat surfaces.

David Simon’s Figure Sculptingclass starts April 18th, and provides an accessible approach to sculpting the figure for students of all levels.  After starting with a one-week pose sculpted on a small scale, students in the class will gradually work up to creating larger pieces based on longer-duration poses.

For students who want to capture dynamic poses on paper, Paul Wee’s Figure Drawing: Action & Form is the key. Paul’s approach emphasizes both speed and accuracy.  Paul strives to give his students “techniques to tackle anything that comes your way!”


Danny Galieote will be offering two drawing classes as well.  Danny’s Analytical Head & Portrait Drawing class examines the drawing technique of Renaissance and Golden Age illustration Masters. Students then apply the Masters’ knowledge to bring three-dimensional form to their work from a live model.  Similarly, Danny’s Analytical Figure Drawing class helps students bring a sense of life and depth to works on paper.

Want to watch the amazing Sean Cheetham demonstrate his approach and techniques in Contemporary Portraiture Painting or Head Painting?

Interested students may purchase a demo pass starting from $50.00. Please contact our business office to take advantage of this special opportunity.

LAAFA is proud to feature Michael Siegel as our current Spotlight Artist.

A limited number of demonstration passes are available starting at $50.00 for students who want to observe Michael demonstrate his masterful technique in Still Life or Portraiture/ Figure Painting. Please contact our business office to purchase demo passes.

 

Congratulations to Michael Siegel, LAAFA’s Spring Quarter 2012 Spotlight Artist!  Reading Michael’s humorous and insightful Spotlight Artist interviewgives you an idea of what it’s like to take his classes. Here’s a sample of his wonderful work.

You can see more of his paintings on his website www.siegelfineart.com.

Michael’s Spring Quarter classes start 4/2/2012. Don’t miss your chance to sign up!