FREE PREVIEW

Course curriculum

    1. Student Orientation Video

    2. Join your community!

    3. Materials

    4. Vocabulary

    1. Materials + Ground Color

    2. Beginning the Drawing

    3. Adding Detail

About this course

  • $79.99
  • 7 lessons
  • 1.5 hours of video content

Great Value

Learn a lifelong skill for the price of a trip to the art supply store

Course overview

In this course, Provost Peter Drake demonstrates his subtractive drawing process, a technique he’s refined since the 1980s. Starting with a gessoed Bristol surface tinted in iron-oxide red, he reveals how to sand, lift, and polish value rather than apply it. You’ll explore tool preparation, grit control, atmospheric rendering, and how to transition from drawing into painting. Drake shares both historical context and personal insights on decay, surface, and illusion, connecting this method to fresco, mezzotint, and chiaroscuro traditions. By the end, you’ll understand how to work with light as your drawing tool instead of shadow.

  • Prepare smooth, gessoed Bristol surfaces

  • Tint grounds with transparent color

  • Render forms using sandpaper grits

  • Control edges and atmospheric light

  • Combine drawing and painting processes

  • Explore light as primary medium

Instructor

Peter Drake

Provost

Peter Drake graduated with a BFA from Pratt Institute. Drake was appointed Provost in January 2018 and previously served as the Dean of Academic Affairs since 2010 at the New York Academy of Art. Drake continues to be a Thesis Advisor having taught at Parsons the New School for Design, the School of Visual Arts, and the Maryland Institute College of Art. Peter Drake’s art has been featured in 27 Solo exhibitions to date. His work is held in numerous private, corporate and public collections including the Whitney Museum of Art, Phoenix Museum of Art, MOCA LA, Weatherspoon Art Museum and the L.A. County Museum of Art, among others. Waiting For Toydot, his permanent public art commission, awarded by MTA Arts & Design features 18 art glass windows and 5 ceramic/glass mosaics installed throughout the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) Massapequa Train Station. It opened to the public in 2015 and is seen by over 6,000 commuters daily.

Additional products

View more products