Classes for amateurs

Amateurs classes : the workshops

The various workshops available for amateur classes are :

• Painting - colour : the painting-colour class functions as a true research workshop studying this art medium and offering a perspective that enables beginners to structure their approach, and those with more experience to develop their skills and research. The academic principle underlying this workshop is one of non-directive, individual teaching centred on the development of the creativity of each individual pupil.

• Painting : The workshop is an initiation of modern and contemporary painting. The workshop provides both a practical and theoretical approach to colour, the supports and mediums. Starting from various references :  painters ; exhibitions (Hôtel des Arts in Toulon, Villa Tamaris in La Seyne-sur-Mer) ; movements in the History of Art ; the workshop proposes exercises that enable the pupil to discover his creative skills and develop a personal artistic language. The class enables the pupil to examine art and the world which surrounds us from a new angle and to develop a critical analysis of painting. The first year is devoted to discovering and experimenting the different techniques which opened the way to Modernism. The second year is centred on the discovery of modern and then further on to contemporary artists. The third year enables pupils to develop their own creativity and their own artistic language.

• Book-binding : The book-binding workshop provides classes on traditional book-binding techniques as well as studying more contemporary techniques. Each pupil begins with an empty neutral book and then moves on to work on his own books. Through the numerous steps involved, the classes reveal the methods available to protect and enhance a text : the creation of a book as an object.

• Live model drawing : in general these classes provide, according to need, a succession of technical exercises, personal work and documented references taken from various mediums, both traditional and digital.

• Engraving : The workshop proposes applying a rough sketch, drawing or plan onto a metal plate (either Copper or Zinc) using the following techniques : “Dry” or “Direct” techniques: Drypoint, Burin, Mezzotint, “Cutting” or “Indirect/Soft' : Etching, Aquatint ; Sugar lift technique ; Soft varnish as well as other more experimental techniques such as the Monotype and Collagraphy.

• Clay ceramics : working from observation exercises, the work of modelling obliges one to consider proportions and the appropriate expression of forms. The pupils then take up the exercises at their own level and can assimilate both the knowledge of and the practice in the field of ceramics.

• Digital photography : learning about Shooting is addressed in the same way in both Analogue and Digital photography. However the “Laboratory and print-making on paper” is completely different regarding the methods and processes used. The analysis and the finalisation of  images demands many hours of work in front of a computer screen.

• Wood carving : in the first year, the priority is placed on discovering and understanding the material “wood” as well as the tools used to work it ; in the second year, the preparatory drawing or technique will be perfected in order to enable each pupil to improve the projection of the volume to be created ; in the third year, as the pupil becomes more autonomous, more frequent references to the history of art are made. In parallel, the techniques specific to every subject studied  are explored.

• History of art : this class is an approach to ancient and contemporary art history through theoretical studies and visits to exhibitions in the different places within the agglomeration and region. The thematic and artistic markers of the principle movements and fundamental concepts of art history are studied.