Studio Classes

Learn More About Our Classes

Our studio program features deep craft training in over 30 different media. The practitioner works through our skills-centered syllabi, while receiving age-appropriate individual instruction at all times, in a small group setting that also allows for peer-to-peer learning experiences.

Fieldwork

Our outings help practitioners develop field-based skills and sensibilities far beyond the controlled space of the studio. Learn more here.

Course Progression

Our pedagogy follows a time-honored progression in the use of media and supports. This, in turn, hinges on the Student’s progressive development of foundational skills and sensibilities across time-periods.

Listed below are the courses in the standard progression

Drawing (All ages 5 and up)

We teach the strongest drawing fundamentals this side of the Mississippi, and we will completely refund your 8-week course payment if you can prove us wrong! This course forms the foundation for the rest of our courses. The student explores over 15 different types of media across various levels of advancement. Five levels of advancement.

Inks (all ages 5 and up)

Explore both Western and Asian sensibilities and practices with this astonishingly powerful medium. Work on diverse papers with brush and pen. Three levels of advancement.

thINK! (Teens and Adults): an inks course with an accent on the pen as the artist’s tool. Over 15 kinds of pens! This venerable, beautiful medium is not for the faint of heart. Learn color theory and composition and over 30 different technical explorations. Start from scratch and be astonished. Three levels of advancement. Call for your preferred time slot.

Watercolors (Ages 5 and up)

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Leave those pale pieces behind and explore real watercolor painting. Explore both the American masters and others abroad; we teach both the British tradition (no white paint) and gouache (which, among other things, uses white paint). Four levels of advancement.

Hit-the-Wall Mural Works (ages 8-17)

Prerequisite: AAHP’s Foundations of Studio Program.

This is a repeating, two-hour weekly class that runs across all eight-week Sessions; Saturdays only.

This is both a painting and an architectural construction course centering on one single art form—the mural. The word mural comes from the Latin word for wall. Mural literally means painting on the wall. The mural as art form is found in Western and non-Western civilization. It was a practice known to pre-historic cave dwellers and, later, to peoples from the so-called New World. Societies from the Old World also knew the mural very well.

Besides serving as an introduction to architectural norms and relevant painting matters, this course also grants the student an invaluable opportunity to survey Western art history, and then from the angle of craft-based knowledge. Students work with the themes and devices that characterize the mural across different periods that mark the canon of Western art history. In this course, students also explore the meaning and methods of both individual and collaborative mural work.

The mural has been explored through many, many media. In this course, we will work with acrylic paints. Each student will develop murals on portable slabs of prepared plywood, each measuring 4 ft. by 2 ft. The AAHP’s trademark stress on cumulative, skills-based problem-solving, procedure, and other aspects of deep craft practice set this course apart.

This course offers Introductory, Intermediate and Advanced pedagogy.

Studio I Course registration available here. 

Oils (Teens and Adults)

Oil has a vibrant history, making its debut during the Northern Renaissance and rapidly becoming the favored medium of many of the Old Masters. Hone your classical art skills in a class that emphasizes deep understanding of color theory, composition, and application techniques in oil. This class requires the completion of at least two Drawing Sessions and requires at least one-and-a-half hours per week.

Acrylics (all ages 5 and up)

Less than a hundred years old, this material has become a leading medium all around the world, used by artists of all kinds. Learn why and how to use acrylics in beautiful, and technically sound, ways.

Collage

Collage is French word that literally means “to glue”. This visual art form entails the construction of images by gluing scraps of paper, fabric found objects, and/or naturalia to what is often a flat, static support, such as a board or thick paper. The entire craft that informs drawing and painting fully informs collage. For example, matters of composition, color science, luminosity, and depth all play major roles. And yet, as with any art form, collage also has its own core craft, which details its specific aims, concerns, and practices. The collage course at the AAHP focuses on fabric collage.

The Artist’s Book

The Artist’s Book is a unique, one-of-a kind art object that takes the form, and often some, or all, of the functions of a book. Books themselves make for a very large category of constructed objects, and so the possibilities for exploration of theme, form and function—among many other things—are endless. The Artist’s Book is an old art form and artists have never ceased pursuing it, though it has been undergoing a resurgence among artists in NYC and across Europe in the past two decades or so. A child artist constructed the AAHP’s first Artist’s Book in 2013, and we have not stopped since. The Artists Book project at the AAHP is usually presented to Portfolio Prep Program (P3) students.

Sculpture (ages 7-18)

Learn sculpting basics while working with clay, paper, wire, mixed media, and wood.

Portfolio (Teens and Adults)

For all college-bound, exhibiting, or competing artists. All others welcome, too. Come and fill in the “holes” in your range of work. Experiment and refine your technique and effective use of media. Work on your actual portfolio, including writing and editing of essays, and photo-documentation. Participate in a mock college interview, and more. ALL of our portfolio graduates have made it to top liberal arts colleges and art colleges in the USA! Click here to apply for a Portfolio consultation. Click here to view Portfolio Information Packet.

Live Figure Studio & Skeletal Anatomy

This offering is suitable for all levels of experience, from first-timers to advanced practitioners.* Our program works with ideas and ideals born over 2,000 years ago in ancient Greece, as inherited through the Renaissance, and through which the healthy human figure is esteemed as the highest form of beauty in the natural order.
Course tuition includes use of drawing boards, newsprint and various materials. Observe live female and/or male models and our life-size, medical-grade skeleton and other anatomical pieces (models of hands, nose, heads, etc). Easel-and-chair set-up.

Experience

New to the practice? Join us to learn the foundations of the practice.

Experienced? Come explore your interests in figure studies, portraiture, movement studies, anatomical studies, gestural drawings, abstractions, scale and proportion, foreshortening, etc.

No course subscription necessary. Register by the week or take your chance as a Walk-In. This program offers hours with and without instruction. Please see course schedule.

*Adults only. Older teens (ages 16-17, and working on college portfolios, pre-med programs, forensic studies, etc.) permitted with written permission from parents, which must be submitted in advance.