Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course review

Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course review

My name is Rose India Coroy and I have been a student at the Life Drawing Academy. I would love to share my journey with you so far and tell you maybe a bit about what I've learnt so far and what studying at this academy is like. So, I take the correspondence course with Vladimir London and he's taken me through so many different tasks.

I mean, I've learnt how to draw still lives, how to draw in perspective, how to draw houses, interiors, exteriors, how to draw things in nature, like trees and flowers, and how to draw drapery, basically how to draw things realistically, in a professional way. The whole start of the course is learning fundamentals such as perspective and shading and all that stuff. And the second half of this course is drawing the human figure. Yes!

And currently I'm learning about the skull and the facial muscles and like I'm going in depth because I love this stuff. This is like my life's bread and butter. I've wanted to draw people my whole life, and now I'm getting to do it realistically, professionally, and to a very high standard. Vladimir took me step by step through everything that you need to learn doing art. In the task that I'm on right now, I have to sculpt a skull, so this is the skull in clay that I've been making, and yeah, it's taken me ages to do, but I'm learning about all the bones and it's really exciting.

So, I'll just give you a quick run through of how this course actually is structured. So, you get your assignment, for example, how to draw a sphere, right? You get it. There's like a PDF document with the instructions in a detailed way telling you what to do, the theory behind it, and then telling you like what to do and then what to report.

And then, once you've got your instructions, you go off and use what you have just learnt to literally draw from life your sculpted sphere. And you go step by step, following a specific method that you get taught. Then once you're done, you can just take a picture of it or a video of your drawing and send it to Vladimir.

And he'll literally critique you and tell you where you went wrong, so that you know what to do better next time and how to improve. And this is an example of what it kind of looks like. So he tells you what to do, and you know, instructions and things. And it's like this for every single task, so you never get lost or anything. And he will keep giving you as much support as you need. Also, one thing I really love about this academy is that most of the work you do isn't even on the computer.

It's called Life Drawing Academy for a reason, you spend 99% of your time drawing from life, so that's why I've got this easel here, since I didn't have an easel when I started this course, but I soon found out that I needed one if I was gonna spend this much time drawing. Drawing, these realistic drawing skills which I've never been taught anywhere else, that have been actually secretly handed down for 500 plus years from master to student.

Even in the Renaissance with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, they used to learn this type of stuff and apprentices would study for seven years with a master artist until they became their own. This course is intensive. This is not some weekend thing that you just do for fun and then, you know, you go, oh well that was great but I still can't really draw in perspective.

This course is so detailed, like, I had no idea when I started this course how detailed it was gonna be. All I knew was that I wanted to draw people. Then I got here and I was like whoa okay Vladimir actually cares about me he wants his students to succeed and you can tell in his emails that he is very precise for a reason it's because he has this traditional knowledge and he wants to pass it down you know this stuff I'm learning like perspective tonal rendering how to draw people anatomy these are all things that have been handed down for hundreds if not thousands of years.

You're learning all this academic traditional realism stuff but then there'll be certain tasks where your creativity comes into it as well and it's really cool to merge it because you get like the realism from the traditional stuff and then you get to add in your own take on it and then it merges into your unique style so not only are you learning realism you're actually getting to develop your own style at the same time. There was also another task where we learn about composition and I learnt about so many different things like the golden ratio and just the beautiful harmony and order found in nature.

I like to keep all mine in here, I've got a massive folder, actually this is one of three, I print them all out so I can refer to them whenever I want, but like I like to print all of my assignments out and categorise them.

I've got all these different assignments in here, and I also like to print out the feedback that I get from my teacher, so that I know what to improve, and it's just easy to have it printed out, you don't have to, but there's also so many things I've learnt doing this course that I never even knew that I didn't know, like you know how they say that you don't know what you don't know. Well, it's true because there's so many little tips and tricks and secret information about shading and shapes and edges and tone and composition.

It's not even just drawing. We also get to sculpt in this course and make 3D models, which helps you draw even better because it's like you're drawing in 3D from 360 angles. I have this A2 sheet of paper that I made with all the hundred tasks and every time that I do one I get to cross it off in green pen and it feels like really satisfying. And I love to write when I start tasks and when I finish them and what they are so it just helps me to keep track of everything and remember it.

It's just a matter of having a course tutor like Vladimir right by your side to answer all your questions and if you just keep plodding along like I have; you do pick things up. It's such a relief to have somebody who genuinely cares about you, the same as having a tutor that can watch over you for several years and see you actually make growth. And, you know, having somebody like that to really help you and care about what you're doing, it's such a gift. I can send him videos and photos of what I'm working on and get professional artist critiques from him, telling me exactly what I need to improve and what I did well, so I actually know what did I do wrong, how can I fix it, since I was a bit tired of just hearing, oh, just express yourself from the course that I was on before, and it's like, okay, well, I'm trying to express myself but I don't know how to draw a cube like just teach me how to do basic stuff so that I can express myself and that is what I'm learning here and I'm just like I'm so grateful this is a hidden gem like more people need to know about this academy it's changing my life.

Thank you so much for watching my video and I am so looking forward to what I'm going to be learning next in this course since I'm only halfway through. So, stay tuned.

To learn good drawing techniques, enroll in the Life Drawing Academy course: