Idea Studio

You have a picture in your head.
Let's build it.

Describe the picture you want to make. The Idea Studio turns it into a real drawing project, the way I teach in my studio: where your eyes are, which perspective to use, how to arrange it, and how to build it step by step from simple forms to the finished piece. Then take it to paint in oil, acrylic or watercolor, with a palette and a painting process for your picture.

"Construction before detail. Get the eye level right and the rest follows."

From my studio

First build it in pencil. Then paint it.

This is how I made Down Town Kingstown (22 × 28 in). The drawing settles the eye level, the two vanishing points and the big shapes. Only then does the paint go on. The Idea Studio walks you through the same two stages for your own picture.

Vaughn Tucker's pencil drawing of Down Town Kingstown: a two-storey corner building in two-point perspective, with construction lines, a traffic light and people on the sidewalk. — **1. Construct in pencil**Eye level, vanishing points, boxes for the building, then windows, steps and people.

The finished painting Down Town Kingstown by Vaughn Tucker: the same corner building in white with red trim under a blue sky. — **2. Paint**The same structure, now carried by light, shadow and colour: white walls, red trim and a Caribbean sky.

Your idea

Describe the picture in your head

Say who or what is in it, what is near and what is far, and how it should feel. One free project a day.

Example

What you get

A student typed: "David in the foreground, Goliath towering in the distance." This is the project the studio built.