Classes
All in-person classes take place at TheDrawingStudio in Los Feliz, Los Angeles. Online classes take place over synchronous zooming. Classes are for students 14 years of age and up. Upon registration, a class Letter of Engagement with detailed information on the class is sent via email to each student. While classes are structured by curriculum they transform with each cohort's spirit and direction. Please contact classes@thedrawingstudio.info with any questions about our classes.
College Art Portfolio Development
$100
Development of a college art portfolio at any stage in the process.
These sessions are for reviewing and working on portfolios at any stage, from getting it of the ground, to in the works or finished but needing a polish. Our work involves creating work that aligns with a distinct visual voice, completing works that do the same, and discerning what is portfolio worthy work. We also spend time writing descriptions of artwork, from various figirative and literal angles, writing artist statements and personal statements. The quality of documentation, sequencing and continuity of vision is never overlooked. Each session and project aims to be as effective and time-efficient as possible, keeping deadlines front of mind.
Cindy's Life Diagram, 2024
Linear Perspective; Drawing from Google Earth
$100
1 and 2 point linear perspective techniques with some style thrown in...
In this workshop we'll learn the basics of creating that convincing sense of infinite depth that the linear perspective technique offers. We'll use Google Earth to rotate our vision and see how and when linear perspective describes the depth of the built world, while trying out multiple mediums and approaches. We'll also talk a bit about the technique's sorted history, when the kind of space that it depicts actually matters and when it doesn't, and why it gets so much play in art and media.
Linear Perspective Street by Jade Jwa, 2024
Life Drawing; Staying on the Page
$100
Gesture, contour, shading, compositional moves, animating touch, anatomical form...
We'll touch upon a gamut of moves in this 2 hour workshop with a live model: drawing a still and moving figure, capturing attitude and spirit, breaking down parts so as not to be overwhelmed by the body's form. We'll consider edge and also value and dabble in technical and material approaches. All the while, we'll stay on the same page, resisting the tendency to begin again, or more like learning to begin again inside the messiness of where we already are. This class is for every level of experience, and will aim to be challenging while keeping people at ease.
Human Study by Ian Trout, 2025
Drawing Your Pet
$100
Texture, Line Quality, Compositional placement, Proportion, Animating Touch.....
How to grasp the distinct qualities of our pet? How to grab at the singular attitude, gaze, texture and feel of them? Or, the memory of them? We'll work from memory and photography, and study how composition, line handling, color and technique can aim for that ultra specificity that is our pet. A 2 hour workshop, all materials provided.
Dog Drawing by Valerie, 2023
4-6 pm
Color Mixing Workshop
$100
Color mixing, matching, pairing, charting, comparing, layering and, above all, relating.....
Open to everyone from total beginners to experienced artists, this workshop with all materials provided will be an exploration of how colors mix and relate to oen another, and to us. We'll spend time color matching, creating color schemes, and interval spectrums; we'll mix likely and unlikely pairs, and eventual create small paintings ( aka drawings) that put to play something we've observed.
Color As Tone Shirt, Jeremy Szuder, 2024
Parent/Teen Workshop
$170 per family
Drawing to connect....
This workshop is for teenager students and their parent/caregiver students. In this multigenerational class we'll dive right in without hesitation using drawing prompts, and then spring beyond that with some twists on collaboration, exchange and a little mixed media. No one need be an experienced drawer, the aim is to use our pencils to connect in a different way. Materials provided.
Candace Nycz's gif of daughter Frankie's song by TV Girl
Composition Games
$100
Composition types, visual emphasis, framing, Gestalt, visual groupings, you name it...
We'll cover all the interrelationships we can find in this workshop on composition. We'll spend time enjoying creating images, but the focus is really on intentionally guiding our viewers eye around the page, and how one, and if one can even do that. We experiment with how figure relates to ground, how certain contrast and relationships get more billing and others get less and why. We'll play by the rules and then break them and will make sure to get to how color throws everything up on the air always, making all rules unstable. Our rythmn will be to create short low pressure works and then discuss, back and forth. All levels of experience welcome and all materials provided.
Meri Navasardyan, No One Focus, 2023
Diagramming Your Life Workshop
$100
Data-visualization, mind-mapping, lists, and compositional techniques.....
This 2 hour workshop for adults and young adults is for every level of experience and materials are provided. Students will be guided through warm-up drawing prompts while we'll ask ourselves what a diagram is, what we want from it today, and what aspects of our respective lives would be most gratifying to visualize. Dialogue depends on each students interest in and comfort with talking their work through, but technical and material guidance is offered throughout the workshop. We'll see what putting the flux of our lives to paper does for us.
Scott's Life Diagram, 2024
4-6pm
Introduction to Observational Drawing Techniques
$100
Contour Line, Sketch Method, Line as Value, Continuous Tone, Linear Perspective, Color as Tone, and Drawing with Style.
Open to everyone from total beginners to experienced artists, this workshops is for students who want guidance on drawing what they see before them. We’ll take on different ways of seeing, shifting focus between line, value, texture, proportion, spatial relations and color, and build up a toolbox of techniques and approaches using multiple drawing mediums. We’ll build a greater understanding of the specificity of our own respective ways of seeing as we draw from varied subjects.
TP Drawing by Megan Parmele
Individual Drawing Instruction
$100 per session
Drawing instruction that is personalized due to particular interests, an artistic goal, a current project, expanding ones practice, a portfolio in design or art, or simply because one-on-one is a better fit for the student.
A curriculum is crafted to fit the student's goals and interests, focusing on techniques and approaches along with conceptual challenges designed to broaden and advance their development. Curiculums are supple and student and instructor continue to shape them.
Driving Studies, Ava Hakakha, 2023
Past & Proposed
Here are some ideas in mind for future classes.
Let us know if you’re interested!
Drawing Over Break
Drawing individually and collaboratively, while building skill.....
This one week, 2 hour morning class will focus on building skill by practicing various conceptual and perceptual approaches. We'll work on site, moving from plein-air drawing to creating wall murals, we'll hone observational skills one day and work with abstraction and experimentation the next. We'll follow our collective noses, but not to the point of wandering, and we'll put a real premium on building concentration and working on what we are not already good at. All the while taking note of how art is both an inside and collaborative job, figuring out when it works to be in one's own zone, and when collective work is best.
Megan Graham, Flesh and Bone Drawing 2025
Drawing for Sculpture
Tactics, techniques and prompts for using drawing to develop a sculptural work...
In this joint workshop between The Infinite School and TheDrawingStudio we'll work to develop the place of drawing in each student's sculptural process. We'll look at how other sculptors use drawing in their own practice and then we'll move through various techniques, tactics, and prompts to develop how we each might use the 2-D plane to draw out the 3-D object. We'll draw and discuss, back and forth, keeping in mind factors like point of view, the spirit of each practice, fabrication needs, and so on. We'll draw to ideate, iterate and then situate the sculptures that are living in our minds' eyes. Students will use basic drawing mediums like graphite, pen, ink, watercolor, pencils, and charcoal, and work on a few different substrates.
All materials are provided. All levels of experience are welcome. Age 18 and up.
Coming soon....
Drawing 3D Drawing, Drawing Waterfalls, Drawing from The Pitt, and Drawing Migraine.....
Protest Sign Workshop
Drawing with words and slogans, posterized image, motifs, etc in a way that gets your singular voice heard.
We'll talk about what it is we want to say, about what's the best way to express and communicate that on a sign, and get to work to make a sign that adds to the voices being seen at the next protest. No drawing experience required. Materials provided.
Correspondence Art Workshop
Returning October 2025.....Drawing for the mail
In this two hour workshop we'll chat about some of the ways in which correspondence art has been used, in Fluxus art practices, as protest, as a means of disseminating work away from the usual institutions, lovingly, not lovingly, etc... Then we'll get to work on drawing our own form of it, IRL and perhaps digitally too. Mixed media is provided, as long as it can be sent through mail.
Correspondence Art, Jade Jwa, 2024
Experimental Drawing
Drawing as Celebration, as Meditation, as Score, as Diagram, as Dimensional.....
This is a three class course of drawing exploration and inquiry for students looking to expand their scope of drawing, and for students looking to enhance their portfolio work. We'll ask what constitutes drawing, what drawing is for, and how it can change the way we imagine ourselves and the world around us. We’ll work on technique and the skills needed to express ourselves clearly, and at the same time we’ll disorient ourselves to what we know drawing to be.
Poetry Drawing, Mikayel Mikayelyan, 2024
Drawing for Glass Artists
Each class explores a mode of drawing that aims to be useful to artists whose primary meidum is glass.
This class runs a gamut of ways that drawing could be incorporated into one's practice using glass. We'll draw transparent objects using varying approaches; we'll draw in chalk as one does in a hot shop floor; we'll draw out a narrative of our life with glass; and we'll work on installation drawings for how glass objects come into being in exhibition and other spaces. Time will be spent on practicing fast loose but clear ideation on the spot, for when working in a hot or cold shop or in front of a flame. The class leaves room for individual ways in which drawing can clarify or enhance current practices. We'll join together in a drawing studio with glass in our minds and hearts.
Chalk Drawing
Working with chalk drawing on multiple surfaces, like paper, walls, and concrete. We'll study how we can use chalk to make murals, interventions, and street art.
Chalk Intervention by Elyse Bouchard
Time-Based Drawing for Portfolio
We'll work on how to create and include drawn gifs and other drawings-which-unfold-over-time into a compelling portfolio
Kevin's Dance
Your Ideas
Not Seeing Something you’re interested in? Propose a class here.