On Learning to See

...from my teachers

There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see. ”
- Leonardo da Vinci

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness. ”
- Leonardo da Vinci

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. ”
- Leonardo da Vinci

I have a t-shirt with the last of the 3 quotes on it. I acquired it in Florence, Italy while studying Russian Academic drawing method in Sergei Chubirko’s studio and here over the winter and spring of 2017-2018. It snowed in Florence that winter, and the spring was spectacular. Another t-shirt with famous artist quotes that I posses is Michelangelo’s “Ancora imparo” (I am still learning), attributed to him at age 87.

Florence, Ponte Vecchio at sunrise:

Drawing by Sergei Chubirko:

Sergei does not have a large social media profile, and I found him by chance via another art student. At the time he was teaching in a private art school in Florence, but has since left and started his own atelier Chiaro-Scuro. I hope to be able to go back for more study one day. I cannot recommend him highly enough as a teacher of Russian academic drawing (constructive method of drawing). Drawing skills are really vision and hand-eye coordination skills. Just as you cannot teach baseball via internet, you cannot fully learn to draw online, although online resources can be extremely useful and give access to great resources which were previously obtainable only with access to academies and museums. To become fully proficient in it, you must find a great teacher and do it the hard way - e.g., 20+ hours spent on one figure drawing. In St. Petersburg Academy you have to do this for 5 years, and the 6th year dedicated to producing a single large format graduation painting. The same method has been taught uninterrupted for 300 years imparting a tradition of obsessive study and work ethic a-la Leonardo da Vinci:

Russian academic drawing from 1972

Contemporary Russian master Nikolai Blokhin:

I always wanted to learn classical realist art, and so in my late 40’s I finally found time and spent several thousands of dollars studying with Sergei Chubirko for only one purpose - learning to see by learning to draw. I worked 10-12 hours a day, every day for 4 months, taking figure and portrait classes during the day, evening classes that were offered to the local community, quick pose sketch sessions, and several “master copy” projects. Florence is filled with opportunities to do that - in museums and churches where you can see frescos by Rafael fresco or Andrea del Sarto up close and personal during a regular church service. On the weekends we did composition studies and went to sketch around the city.

Fresco by Rafael in Ognisanti Church

Fresco by Andrea del Sarto

Street in Florence

in Ufizzi Gallery

While the most significant way to learn representational art is in person, that is extremely time consuming (and very expensive!) Finding the right teacher is difficult and, as in my case, I had to spend a lot of time and money traveling very long distances. In addition to Sergei, I learned from several other teachers, both in person and online. I studied with Steve Carpenter in New York, and took several workshops with the great contemporary masters - David Leffel and Sherrie McGraw in Taos, NM. And I continue to study. I take at least one in-person workshop a year in Arizona at the Scottsdale Artists School. However, my experience also shows that it is possible to be largely self-taught. I learned most of the time by myself thanks to the internet and online resources. The key is to find the right ones and of course practice, practice practice!

This Substack is for those of you who would like to supplement your learning. I will be doing mostly video lessons, some will be fully narrated, and some are just “watch and learn” - due to my life arrangement I cannot always work in a space where I can record a good audio (traffic, noise, barking dogs and distractions). I am also exploring options to offer 1-off pricing for individual demos for free subscribers, if you are interested in a particular category. There is no structured curriculum, this is an apprenticeship model, watch and learn, minus the grunt work of stretching and prepping canvases, sweeping the studio and grinding paints. Please join me if you are interested in really learning to see!