- Teacher: Ruthie
- Course Length: 4 sessions
- Start Date: Sunday, March 1
- Time: 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Art Appreciation; Drawing from Sculptures
The Secrets of Sculpture Design
4 Weeks. All Levels
Every great sculpture is alive. It twists, leans, and breathes in space, pulling us to walk around it. Beneath that vitality lies a system of design – angles that repeat, masses that counterbalance, and rhythms that unfold as we move. This class reveals how sculptors build that sense of life: the hidden geometry that makes form feel animated, inevitable, and whole.
We’ll study sculptors who think through movement and structure – Rodin, Maillol, Giacometti, Marini, Brancusi, Moore, and Hepworth – and contemporary artists who extend that lineage, including Antony Gormley and Huma Bhabha. Each week focuses on a different principle of sculptural design: torsion and flow, repetition and interval, angle and counter-angle, expansion and containment.
Through guided discussion and sketches from 3D observation, you’ll learn to read how weight shifts, how surfaces turn, and how forms breathe through space. Your drawings will act as visual notes – maps of motion and balance, not renderings. Optional homework will be to sketch figures, pets, or plants from life, then modify them to strengthen sculptural or drawing design – testing how change in proportion or angle alters the feeling of movement and presence.
No drawing or sculpting experience is needed. The goal is to train your eye to see structure—how physical form expresses direction, energy, and coherence.
Pairs naturally with The Secrets of Painting Design and No-Tears Critique for artists developing insight into how structure and movement create visual life.
Materials list:
- Drawing paper or sketch pad, minimum 8.5 x 11 in (larger is great)
- Graphite pencils — a range of hard and soft (e.g., 2H–6B)
- Small set of colored pencils, conte, or similar for color studies
- Roll of SARAL Wax-Free Transfer Paper — choose a color that shows clearly on your paper (blue, red, and gray are most visible)
- Plastic eraser (e.g., Staedtler or similar)
All levels welcome.
