This post is a long one, but one of my favorites. Maybe because it’s all about me
For the past seven years, I’ve been keeping a record of all the classes I took, and I’ve kept every single drawing. I’m going to do something different and post my schedule from the past 7 years. This post is NOT to show people what path to take, it’s just mine. Everyone’s journey is unique. That is what I love about the atelier program – you create your journey and your future. You are not part of a curriculum. This post IS meant to be used as an example to help you develop your own path.
This post shows my entire school schedule, but it doesn’t show the working and studying I did at home. I put in at least another 20 hours every week working on my own projects at home.
I don’t plan on leaving the atelier anytime soon. Even though I’ve gotten much more than I could ask for from a school, it would be stupid of me to leave this environment unless I absolutely have to. Being in an environment of like-minded, hard working artists pushes me to keep growing. I think it’s essential.
So here’s my schedule for the past 7 years… I’ve included sample work and an overview for every year.
2003
Winter ’03
Spring ’03
Summer ’03
Fall ’03
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*Click to Zoom![]() ![]() |
Overview
2003 was a slow start. High school obligations allowed me to take classes only on weekends. But that’s OK. I got the ball rolling in 2004. I’m glad I took the Intro to Tonal Drawing twice. Smart move. But the storyboarding and features classes were way too early. At this point I was still trying to become an animator. I thought that taking those classes would get me there faster. Wrong! In the storyboard class, I ended up struggling with basic drawing problems rather than focusing on the art of storyboarding.
2004
Overview
This was a great academic year for me. Every semester had 2-3 core drawing classes along with 1 fun specialty class. In the fall I took gouache as a transition from drawing to painting. It’s great to start painting with gouache before oil because gouache trains you to tile. Place a stroke and leave it. Gouache dries so fast that you don’t have time to blend it. When transitioning to oil, I already had the habit of tiling my strokes rather than mushing the paint around. I made a lot of good decisions this year.
2005
Overview
Not as many of the core classes this year, but most of the time was still spent drawing from life. Now it was just more specialized life drawing, like hands, feet, drapery, and animals. Continued doing the gouache painting and slowly moved into more oil painting and plein air. I worked on a lot of illustration projects at home this year. So, at this point I’m starting to create my own ideas, develop them, and take them to a finish.
2006
Overview
This year I stopped illustrating and started focusing mainly on painting. I took a variety of painting classes and dedicated the Spring semester to long-pose drawing and painting. At this point I started accepting some commissions and staging photo shoots to work on longer paintings at home.
2007
Overview
2007 was the year I started teaching. Teaching put a lot of pressure on me to improve my skills and to fully understand concepts. A teacher must know the information well enough to articulate it effortlessly. You can see me taking this very seriously in the Fall when I took all 3 core classes and signed up for 5 artist workshops to study some new teaching styles. These workshops are scattered throughout 2007 and 2008. This year I also partnered with an art agent, who began selling my work to galleries.
2008
Overview
This year I focused a lot on studio painting to produce some work for my agent. Also, I made some friends with whom I started a lot of new business ventures. Most of these have failed by now, but the lessons learned are priceless. These businesses include a taco shop finder, nursing scrub label, event planning, nightclub guest-list system, and graphic design. I learned a lot about web/graphic design and branding this year while building these businesses. I will apply all these lessons to my fine art career in 2009.
2009
Overview
As the economy plunged, businesses failed and painting sales stalled. I started looking ahead and planning ways of improving my fine art as a business. I started writing this blog to make a bigger impact in the art world and get my name out there. I’m going plein air painting weekly and I continue doing the studio paintings to build that mighty portfolio!
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If you’re still early in your art training I highly recommend keeping a log of your studies. Reviewing the past 7 years while writing this post helped me see the big picture. I realize how the little decisions can impact my future dramatically. Now I put a greater value to every semester and every choice I make about my career.
So it was summer ’05 when we were @ Mission San Luis Rey and we made your impromptu box easel! That’s neat. Great posting Stan!
Stan, Outstanding post. It’s very encouraging to see how far you’ve come and what you had to do to get there. Great content. Keep them coming. TY
This is awesome, stan! it’s so amazing to see the progress you’ve made. i wish now that i had kept more of my drawing. I really miss taking classes with you!
Great post! You’ve improved quite a bit in 7 years & you’re just gonna keep getting better!
Stan,
Poked around on your site today, love the documentation. Neat to see your path up until now. Keep rockin.
This is amazing. It is very interesting to see how your focus and dedication have paid off. Very inspiring!
Beverly, Candace, Catherine, Melissa, Austin, Clement – Thanks all for the compliments. I’m hoping to show newer artists what can be achieved through hard work, patience, dedication and a supportive environment.
I’ve had a lot of support through out the years. Definitely a great community to grow up in. Thanks all!
Awesome Stan. It’s also interesting to me that you never took more than 5 classes at once. It is clear that good discipline combined with good training, even in small amounts really adds up to something special.
Ya, I took no more than 5 classes because I couldn’t afford any more, but it turned out to be a good thing because I had more time to practice at home. But, like you said, this only works if you have the discipline to practice at home regularly.
Hello
Could you explain what you mean by high school obligations? Does that mean you enrolled in those 2003 courses as a junior/senior in high school? How old were you at the time? Did you basically study alongside college students?
Charles – I was 17, a junior in high school. Took classes at Watts on the weekends. Watts atelier is not only for college students. The age ranges from 16 – 70. Anyone is welcome, and mature kids under 18 can take classes with parental permission.
Fascinating to see that you were so talented even at a young age
really nice work.
I am imprased.
Hi Stan.
I’ve just looked at your progression from art student to master artist with awe. Your shadings have given each piece so much depth that each piece looks like you could touch the face and feel the skin.
Thank you for sharing them,
Fiona
Hi Stan!
this is my first time to read your blog seriously. I am a newie of sketching, from Hong Kong, China. I have learnt so much skills (the eye, nose, hair etc) from your blog. It is very excited to read your blog, because your teaching makes everything easier. I like your drawings. Your sharing spirit and encouraging words really touch me. I believe you are being very successful. it is wonderful to know you, you are so positive and full of energy.
That is mighty impressive!
I’m just starting out and know that persistence and commitment makes the difference in artistic development -but it’s so heartening to see that reality through the pics you’ve shared. Thank you so much!
The stuff from ’03 is very telling. It’s hard to draw broken pictures in a class room full of amazing artists years ahead of your skill level and continue to take your work seriously. It’s some serious intimidation to get past.
I’m an aspiring artist and this was very encouraging. Your blog has made me determined that I can be a successful artist.
But I would like to know if there are any good classes for younger students that you know of.
C, it there are many good classes available. Check out http://artrenewalcenter.org/pages/ateliers.php for their list of schools in your area. They have a map too. Online is also an option. There are a lot of free videos on my educational website proko.com. And plenty of premium videos if you want to go a step further.
Stan, Outstanding post. your sooooo inspiring thanks man for share with us
Particularly beautiful landscape painting, as seen very early on in your painting career. Had you been using the Zorn palette for the landscape painting shown? I am interested in Watts online painting program and may register as soon as I get the answer to some of my questions. I had taken Reilly classes as a younger student. No where else have I seen such beautiful brushwork taught. I was under the assumption that brushwork was particular to the artist but I can see the Watts atelier does emphasize this. As well as impressionistic color, which the Reilly system does not teach.
Thank you Julia. I almost never use Zorn palette for landscapes, only portraits. Zorn palette can get you chromatic warms, but it’s very weak in the cools. So a landscape that requires some nice blues, purples, greens wouldn’t be possible with Zorn palette. If you’re looking for a limited palette for landscape try using the 3 primaries – yellow, red, blue and add white and black. You can get a very good range with those 5 tubes.
If I remember correctly, Scott Christensen uses something similar. Cadmium Yellow Pale, Cadmium Red Medium, Ultramarine Blue, Titanium White. He then mixes a bunch of grey tones from those, for convenience. You can watch his video for a better description and demonstration of this palette.
Wow thanks for all this detailed information and all the videos you posted! They have been very helpful and entertaining and gave me the motivation to get back into working on portraits!
This really inspired me.Thanks for sharing.
An artist friend of mine told me about your YouTube videos last year and I have enjoyed them a great deal. More recently, I stumbled across the Jeff Watts Friday night live videos, then found the video of Jeff interviewing you. Now I’m seriously considering trying out the Watts Atelier online drawing course – and must say you get some credit for that. Seeing the improvement in your drawing that you shared is very encouraging. I’ve looked at some of your more recent paintings and drawings online and consider you an accomplished professional. Having said that, the first figure drawing you shared from 2003 is about where I consider myself now, which is why I am so encouraged. I’m 56, have a business to run, so I have no delusions about how fast and far I can improve my skills. What I do know is that I can improve them a lot. Keep up the good work. I’ll be referring to your videos frequently.
Thank you. I appreciate the illustrations you shared to show the progress. I think I will start keeping everything – even the dismal failures. Only been at it for a few months, things are bound to improve.
One big difference between when you started and now though is YouTube. There is a lot of free information available now that wasn`t out there when you were starting out.
this is very inspiring . It looks like you took the classes in person. Do you think I would get the same education if I took the online classes?
You definitely would not get the same education as taking the classes in person. Think of online videos as a resource. Kind of like a book. They’re very useful, but they don’t replace an apprenticeship-like program where you get personal mentoring.
Yes that’s true, there are a lot more resources now.