What is the fair price for a drawing course

This Post Has 5 Comments

1. Claudia says:

   March 10, 2016 at 10:14 am - Reply

   The course is well worth whatever price you pay for it. The instruction is clear, concise, and excellent teaching. I recommend you sign up for all three courses available by Vladimir and Natalie – DrawingAcademy.com AnatomyMasterClass.com and WebArtAcademy.com.

   Sincerely,
   Claudia Johnson

2. tometeacher says:

   May 13, 2018 at 11:48 am - Reply

   As a guest respondent and yet a subscriber to the course, I spent four years in an accredited University with an Art Major. Ha! Just the tips alone that I have received from this site already exceeds anything I was ever taught at the University. Four wasted years, lost G.I. bill (wasted on the University) and no improved concept, skills or constructive value while the instructors sat in their offices drinking coffee, making personal phone calls and reading whatever, the latest art digest maybe.
   What is the fair price? Consider the cost that is required to construct such a course being offered in man hours, liabilities, payments to sub-contractors and the list goes on. A fair price is what you can honestly afford. Each person must weight what is of value to them. A fair price can only be generalized for a fair and equitable return to the holder.
   I am still waiting to accru the funds to purchace the course.

3. Chez Watts says:

   July 18, 2018 at 10:05 pm - Reply

   I have no doubt that all the Old Masters/Drawing Academy courses are good value for money. However, you should not fool yourself that a full time course at a comparable academic institution is so much more expensive when it comes down to it. If we set aside the majority of Art Schools in this country (UK) and elsewhere who fail their students as described in the Old Masters advertising, there are still some places, recently opened, where the traditional Atelier approach is taught. These provide many facilities that the Old Masters courses assume that you can provide for yourself, a dedicated life room, models always on tap, plaster casts of the antiquities, and hands on advice. A tutor will watch you painting and drawing and immediately see what you are doing wrong and correct you. The feedback loop is shorter. If you were to hire a model daily, buy plaster casts of the antiquities, buy and equip a life room studio to match your on-line course to the real life one, then you would see that it would not come significantly cheaper that signing on full time at, e.g. LARA (London Academy of Representational Art), about £10,000/annum for 3 years, where you would learn the disciplines that Vladimir wishes to inculcate. You would also have the benefit of a cohort of other students to learn from and socialize with. Few people can afford this, but fewer can expect to provide these necessities for their own private use at home

   • Sam says:

     July 19, 2018 at 10:27 am - Reply

     Chez, are you joking? You begin with saying that full time art courses can be inexpensive and then give an example of LARA that costs “only” £10,000 x 3 = £30,000 or about $40,000 USD!

     Please don’t treat people like idiots. There is a huge difference between $40,000 and $257! In fact your “cheap” LARA is 155 times more expensive than http://drawingacademy.com!

     I hear what you are saying about equipment, teachers and peer students in some conventional art Atelier. Let’s be clear about it, for $40,000 I can have 40 great holidays around the world and visit hundreds of fine art museums where I can draw ORIGINAL (not plaster casts) ancient Greek and Roman sculptures and study ORIGINAL Old Masters paintings. No art teacher would be ever able to replace such experience. At two holidays per year, this would keep me busy for next 20 years!

     If someone doesn’t want to travel, but interested in drawing models, $40K would buy 4,000 drop-in life drawing sessions at $10 per session. Going to such sessions three times per week would take 25 years of continuous life drawing practice!

     If I had $40,000 to spend, I would enroll in the Drawing Academy for $257, which gives a lifetime membership and travel the world to learn traditional drawing skills.

4. Chez Watts says:

   July 19, 2018 at 5:38 pm - Reply

   Sam, you are missing my point. I don’t think you will find it so easy to get permission to draw and paint in museums beyond the quick sketch, standing with a hand held sketchbook. Painting and drawing are messy activities, potentially dangerous in a museum environment, that require a sink to clean up, unthinkable for museum curators. The museums own restorers may have a foot in the door when it comes to this sort of activity, but not your average Joe. When it comes to ‘cheap’ drop in life classes, even Vladimir tells us in his missives that drop in life classes with 5, 10, 15 and half hour poses are not the route to becoming a good draftsman. In the typical community hall scenario, sitting elbow to elbow in a stacking plastic chair with a sketch book on your lap is not setting yourself up for success. You need an easel and drawing board, and you need a car to take them there. These groups can be more detrimental than helpful when it comes to developing the right skills. Two hour drop in classes, even if they have a single pose, which most do not, are simply not long enough to find your mistakes and correct them. At an Atelier you will get weeks on the same pose, accurately reset every day. You need a space where you can set up a pose and leave the environment untouched for as long as it takes you to complete the work. I always had to paint in my bedroom, but then the advice arrived that says using solvents in the room where you sleep is a sure way to early Alzheimer’s disease. Doing art at home is expensive, apart from hiring the models, you need a dedicated space to do it with the right light and cosy heating and good ventilation available. Even if the Web Art Masters have provided all the tuition you need, which is a great help and valuable, there is much else that you must be prepared to provide yourself, if you are to succeed. Learning to paint and draw well, will not come cheap no matter how you do it.

   After I graduated at Art school, still feeling skill free, I spent virtually all of my disposable income for three years doing 45 hours a week of life drawing in a Victorian large purpose built North light life studio where they supplied two models for every session. I did not dream of holidays abroad and learning in 20 years time, I wanted to acquire the skills as soon as possible. There was little tuition, but a Zen attitude of learning by discovery & practice. For me, having the facilities provided was the most important thing. I used the cheapest Art materials, but probably the classes cost the equivalent in the cash of the times of £10,000 a year. I willingly lived and ate very frugally. Alas, this institution no longer exists in this form and is used for pre-dip students doing the usual mish-mash of putting garbage together to make ‘art’. The new Ateliers springing up around the world are the equivalent of what I experienced, but now with the formal learning discipline of the French 18th century Academies as an underlying educational structure. You are lucky to have them. If you really have the determination to learn how to paint and draw well, you will think it little sacrifice to find a way to pay for that experience, and forgo foreign holidays. On the other hand, you can learn at home to paint passable still lives and landscapes for a much more modest outlay.