• Green painting of a woman on an easel
  • painting of a belly button
  • Painting of a man wearing yellow pants turning away against a black backdrop

Class Description:

This course explores the academic figure through drawing and oil painting.

In the first half of this course, students will draw a live model from direct observation to understand the relationships between line, form, perspective, proportion, anatomy, and light value. In the second half of the course, students will transfer their figure drawings onto a provided canvas to paint the figure. Students will then learn and apply indirect painting techniques, beginning by refining light value and edge in a monochromatic underpainting, transitioning into limited color through temperature studies, and opening into intense chroma with an expanded palette. Emphasis in this course is on analytical seeing/interpreting of the human form.
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Spring Semester Dates:

Scheduled occurrences for this class are as follows:

Week
Date
Time
Week 1:
1/31/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET
Week 2:
2/07/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET
Week 3:
2/14/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET
Week 4:
2/21/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET
Week 5:
2/28/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET
Week 6:
3/06/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET
Week 7:
 3/13/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET
Week 8:
 3/20/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET
Week 9:
 3/27/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET
Week 10:
 4/10/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET
Week 11: 4/17/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET
Week 12: 4/24/2024
6:30 - 9:30 pm ET


  1. Before Class - Welcome & How to Prepare for Class

  2. Week 1 - Getting Started: Gesture, Weight, Balance

  3. Week 2 - Planning the Drawing: Creating the Thumbnail Sketch

  4. Week 3 - Approaching the Large Drawing

  5. Week 4- Refining the Line and Adding Basic Value

  6. Week 5 - Developing Features through Shadow

  • $595.00
  • In-Person
  • 12 Weeks
  • Intermediate to Advanced

Meet Your Instructor

Melanie Berardicelli

Instructor

Melanie Berardicelli is a SURP and CE Painting Professor at the New York Academy of Art. She has been an educator of the fine arts since 2014, teaching painting and drawing, life drawing, sculpture, and art history classes at Ivy League School in Smithtown and USDAN Center for the Fine and Performing Arts. Melanie received a Master of Fine Arts in Painting at the New York Academy of Art in May 2021 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing at SUNY New Paltz in 2017. Melanie’s artwork explores the spark felt when entering the sacred space of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the history of the Roman Martyr Catacomb Saints; her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout New York State, including The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, Sotheby’s, Cryptic Gallery, Greenpoint Gallery, Upstream Gallery, The Huntington Arts Council, and The New York Academy of Art. Currently, Melanie assists artist Audrey Flack in her New York and East Hampton studio locations, creating the underpaintings and sculptures for Flack’s current Post-Pop Baroque series. Melanie is also children’s book illustrator. Her work for Augie Goes to the Library- a 48-page commemoration to the New Paltz community and the titular Border Collie- was published in 2016.

Achieve your artistic potential

Join us to discover traditional skills and contemporary practice

Enroll today

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