Art Home School: Overview and Syllabus

"Art home school" is my plan / process / syllabus for learning art at home, in a focused and structured manner, while working a full-time job in a non-art industry.

It's largely based on these two resources

• RadioRunner's Internet Curriculum for the Solo Artist
• Litmusik's art home school outline

So far my entire art experience is only ~30 hours of gesture and figure drawing practice over the past month (pic below).

The Process

Each week I'll work on a different unit. Units are focused on a single topic (e.g Head anatomy 1), and take ~100 hours of practice spread across 3 to 4 weeks.

Time breakdown

• 3 hours on weekdays
• 5 hours on weekends
• 25 hours a week total

I'll be time tracking everything using Timelines

Litmusik is incredibly inspirational to me, having created an art home school plan for himself and writing updates on his progress every week since October 2020. I'll be following in his steps and posting progress updates every week.

Each Term (2 months)

• Start: Assess the scheduled units for this term and make changes if necessary. Plan materials to study from for each unit.
• End: Evaluate process and progress. Write a blog post on what I've learned, how I've grown and stumbling blocks. Showcase the work I'm most proud of.

Each week

• Start: Create a rough list of exercises to complete for each unit, and a schedule for what unit to study each day.
• End: Blog post showing all my drawings for the week, my thoughts on my progress and what needs work, thoughts on the unit materials, and stumbling blocks with the process.

Syllabus for June 2022 through January 2023

Term 1, June/July

Figure Drawing 1

• Kenzo's Figuary 2019
• Kenzo's Fresh Eyes Challenge

Head Anatomy 1: The Loomis Method

• The Loomis Method (Proko)
• 100 Heads Challenge

Perspective 1: Draw a Box Part 1

• Draw a Box lesson 1: lines ellipses and boxes
• Draw a Box lesson 2: organic forms, dissections and intersections
• 250 box challenge

Term 2, August/September

Perspective 2: Draw a Box Part 2

• Draw a Box lesson 3: applying construction to plants
• Draw a Box lesson 4: applying construction to insects and arachnids
• Draw a Box lesson 5: applying construction to animals

Figure Drawing 2

• Proko Figure Fundamentals
• Figure Drawing: Design and Invention (Book)
• Sketch >15 drawing for each major subject introduction

Term 3, October/November

Composition & Storytelling 1

• Sycra on Iterative Drawing
• Blender Guru on Understanding Composition
• Composition in Art
• Mark Rilley on Composition
• Methods for finding pleasing compositions
• Practice iterative drawing: pick 2 subjects and draw 10 variations for each

Figure Drawing 3: The Constructive + Reilly Method

• The Constructive + Reilly Method (Videos)
• Figure Drawing: Design and Invention (Book)
• Draw 25 figures using the Reilly method
• Pose 25 figures from imagination and construct them using simple forms

Term 4, December/January

Head anatomy 2

• The planes of the head (videos)
• Understanding & painting the head with Marco Bucci (course)
• Draw 50 Asaro heads from different angles using Sketchfab
• Draw 25 faces from reference, adding the planes onto the reference.

Perspective 3: Finish Draw a Box

• Draw a Box lesson 6: applying construction to everyday objects
• Draw a Box lesson 7: applying construction to vehicles

Color & light 1

• Foundations of light and shadow (videos)
• How to Render by Scott Robertson (book)