Scholarship Competition is now open!

The Academy of Realist Art, Boston has launched its second annual scholarship competition for promising artists with a love for academic style painting and drawing.

The Academy is one of a select few art schools in the world that teaches the academic approach to figure drawing and painting. We model our curriculum and classical techniques on those used by 19th-century European academies to help students master fine art skills.

The scholarship to be awarded is for one year's free tuition for the school year, September 2014-June 2015. Applicants must be 18 years of age or older.

Deadline for submission is March 15, 2014. Winners will be announced March 30, 2014.

Click here to see rules/contest requirements.

Guild of Boston Artists Competition

We're proud to have 3 ARA Boston instructors (Emmy De Musis, Brian MacNeil, and Julie Beck) chosen as finalists in The Guild of Boston Artists 2013 Annual Regional Painting Competition.

"Established in 1914 by the prominent painters of the day, including Edmund Tarbell, William Paxton and Frank Benson, The Guild of Boston Artists was created to be an artist owned and operated gallery. With the mission of promoting both emerging and established artists living in the region, the Guild developed a reputation for excellence in quality and presentation."

The opening for the show, which is free to the public, is on Saturday October 5th from 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM. We would love to see you there!

Emmy De Musis, Painting of Ernesto

Julie Beck, Painting of Silas

Brian MacNeil's Lost in the Shuffle

ARA Boston's New Website

We are very excited to announce the launch of our new website. Our goals for this redesign and revamp were to make it easier to understand the format of the school, and have the information you need right easily available. We would love to know what you think!

Click here to visit the new site! 

(same web address, new look)

http://academyofrealistartboston.com

Color Lab Wrap Up with photos

Recently we wrapped up our last workshop of the summer. It was taught by Sean Krajnik. In this workshop students learned to mix and paint human flesh tones. Through a series of in-depth lectures students learned the fundamental principles of color and gained a greater appreciation for the complexity of painting the human figure.

Using modern color science and color measuring tools such as the Munsell Book of Color and a spectrophotometer students became familiar with the hues they might use to paint flesh.

The beginning lessons dealt with fundamentals like paint selection and organizing a flesh tone palette. Student's then learned to mix the subtle hue and value changes that occur when form changes illumination. They did this using simple flesh colored geometric shapes under a single light source.

Then students worked on a flesh study of a figure painting.

color matching

As you can see from the glare in the photo below, Sean has used saran-wrap to cover the image he is duplicating. This allows the student to color match directly on the image and check for accuracy. Once the correct color key is chosen, the saran-wrap can be set aside to reference later on.

The Academy of Realist Art, Boston offers PDP's

The Massachusetts Department of Education has approved the Academy of Realist Art, Boston to provide PDP's (Professional Development Points) for Massachusetts primary and secondary school teachers. This means that art teachers in Massachusetts can come and take classes and workshops at the school and receive credit towards their recertification requirements.

We are approved for drawing and painting courses that cover a variety of topics including methods, materials and techniques of drawing and painting as well as principles of design, and elements of color and value. With a wide selection of qualifying courses art teachers will find much of the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks content covered.

Our summer Bargue course and 2 painting workshops are examples of classes that provide PDP's as well as many of the classes we offer beginning in September.