Any good art lessons in toronto? please help!

[mikenogo]

Hi, well, I am getting a little worried about my art skills, and i hardly went to art lessons before, I feel the need of improving a lot of field in art.

Such as shading, colors, anatomy, posture, perspective, etc.

I am currently looking for some art lessons that I can take after school (still in high school)
But i cannot find out which one is a good place to learn? Anyone who lives around my area have any recommendations?

I really really hope i get some answers. Thanks.

[Nathan House]

I've taken some courses at Toronto School of Art (www.tsa-art.ca) down at Spadina and Adelaide (I think...).

[mikenogo]

how is it? Is it good? what do you think about it?

[ramoutar]

I've only taken one class at the Toronto School of Art. It was the Life Drawing class with Thomas Hendry, and the class runs on Saturdays. Thomas is a really good instructor, I enjoyed his class a lot.

[StupidIsAsStupidDoes]

Yeah, definitely take a class with Thomas Hendry if you can. He is, without a doubt, one of the best teachers I've ever had. Really encouraging and open-minded.

Some other teachers I'd recommend:

Megan Williams
Gillian Iles
Tina Poplawski
Tom Campbell

The staff at TSA is really friendly and helpful. They have courses and teachers that cater to just about everyone's needs.

If you want to learn/review the basics, I'd suggest looking into these classes:

Life Drawing (Hendry, Iles or Williams): There are 2 levels to this course; you can take both with one instructor, or switch. If you think your skills are strong enough, you can jump right into Life Drawing 2.

Drawing 1 (Donnelly Smallwood or Kate Brown): Donnelly's class is more of a foundation course in gesture, contour, proportion, tone, and construction; whereas Kate's course is more of a craft. I haven't actually taken Donnelly's class, but I've heard good things about it.

Painting 1 (Campbell): Introduces you to the fundamentals of handling paint, values, composition, basic colour theory and old master techniques (ie underpainting, glazing, warm/cool colour schemes). You can work with oil or acrylic.

Fundamental Acrylics (Poplawski) or Fundamental Oils (Celia Neubauer): Establishes a solid understanding of the handling properties of both mediums. It's recommended that you take one or the other in addition to Painting 1 (that way, you won't get frustrated with the handling properties of oil or acrylic, and you can concentrate on the actual painting process).

Life Painting (Iles) or Figure And Portrait Painting (Williams): Gillian's class is more about colour choices, observation, and compositional techniques. The poses are longer. Megan's class is more about construction, proportion, value, and rendering.


Spring and Summer classes:

Structural Drawing (Hendry): Teaches the basics of perspective and geometrical construction.

Anatomy and Figure Drawing (Hendry): Expands on basic figure drawing techniques while providing a thorough exploration of human anatomy. I strongly recommend waiting for this one; the year-long course taught by Marie Lehman was uninspired, and didn't really teach me anything, IMHO.

[TristanR]

i took leasons from Florian Jacot for quite a while and hes really very good at painting and teaching. Class sizes were always very small when i was there, i think the most students in the class was maybe 6 which means you get some serious one on one time with Florian. And the cost was comparable to tsa if i remember correctly. His site is www.florianjacot.com if you want to check out his work. It doesn't show any classes going right now but he might just be waiting for enough people to say there interested so it couldn't hurt to send him an email if your interested.

[Maxine Schacker]

Max the Mutt offers workshops during the year, and in July we have a one month intensive that includes life drawing every day, two weeks of perspective and two weeks of Principles of Drawing which teaches basic concepts using still life. Check out the website, www.maxthemutt.com, or contact Carla Drmay at the school, 416-703-6877. I believe that we will start enrolling students for the July intensive (also known as "Learn To Draw") In January.

Tristan, how are you? I hope you're getting lots of painting and drawing done!
You have so much potential...just keep going! Have you thought about applying for a scholarship?