The Young Adult Studio Class is an after-school enrichment course designed for motivated artists aged 15 – 18.
Our focus is not on assessment tasks but rather on providing an experience that develops your artistic practice while fostering a lifelong love of art. Here, you are treated as an artist, not just a student, as we guide you in building essential habits and skills alongside building confidence and an understanding of your own personal curiosities.
Projects are designed to teach skills whilst also developing ideas and critical thinking and will encompass both 2D and 3D approaches, with a strong emphasis on drawing. Being part of The Art Room community you’ll experience the dynamic atmosphere of the art school, surrounded by established artists and gaining access to ever-changing exhibitions and an extensive art library.
The projects explored will allow students to build a portfolio for entry into select-entry institutions and tertiary education, and there will be opportunities within the course to discuss the preparation of applications and interviews.
About Module 1: Drawing
This eight week module will acquaint students with the basics of observational drawing: through line and value and with regard to perspective and light, volume and gesture. With the still-life as our focus, we will cover drawing’s fundamental methods and materials before foraying into exercises in creative copywork and collage with the aim of nurturing students’ creative visions. Students will be encouraged to see drawing as a record of a process: a process of looking, of discovering, of thinking and feeling, of attempting and persevering.
Along the way, we will look at works of art from Europe, Asia, the Americas and the Australian continent. Many classes will begin with short exercises in close looking, prefaced by necessary historical context. Together we will ask: What makes this works alive? What story is the artist telling? How and why does this still resonate with us today, across space and time? Among other things, looking at art will help us see the sacrifices in detail necessary to create a whole, and the relationship between an artist’s style and subject matter. We will pay close attention to what is weird in the drawings and paintings we observe, discovering that what they show us is indeed an interpretation, composed of relationships that become clearer the longer we look.
Future modules will build on this foundation with forays into sculpture, ceramics, printmaking and painting. Participating students may have the opportunity to present their work in one of the Art Room’s galleries at the end of 2024.
