Winter 2018-19

The Intensive Program is the sure road to take to stand out to college recruiters. It is for students ready for a dedicated daily art practice that allows them to give their portfolio the time and attention necessary, to develop to its highest quality.

Ashcan’s Portfolio Prep program helps students develop a unique and coherent body of work that is essential to the pursuit of higher studies. Students get personal attention from instructors to focus on personal projects and creative thinking.

The Digital Painting class is an introductory course where students learn how to apply traditional painting techniques to digital painting and illustration using a Wacom tablet. Students experiment and explore painting digitally as they design their own characters, narrative settings and story boards.

Students begin this class by practicing fundamental rendering techniques, then move on to developing strategies to combine diverse media, modes of representation and elements of design to express individual content. Research and invention are encouraged. The curriculum culminates in the completion of a series of drawings that display formal and conceptual maturity.

Sculptural techniques are taught in three broad categories; clay modeling, mold making and casting, and assemblage. Students learn how to develop their ideas in three- dimensional media, and may at times create works that combine two and three-dimensional media. The curriculum culminates in the completion of a series of sculptures that display formal and conceptual maturity.

The Portrait course covers comprehensive methods for developing portrait projects, including how to draw facial features, and how to discover ways to represent a subject’s identity through content, color and texture.

The still life course allows students to explore diverse, unexpected media and subject matter to render objects and materials from life.

A supplement to the drawing curriculum in which students draw from live models in the studio to acquire a better understanding of gesture and anatomical form. Students may also use figure drawing sessions as a resource for works based on individual content.

The illustration curriculum extends the student’s knowledge in fine arts media to create solutions in illustration. This includes developing and utilizing narrative devices and pictorial symbolism. Emphasis is placed on dry media and fast-drying media, such as ink, watercolor and gouache. Students may resolve projects as single images or as series of images in sequential formats, such as hand-bound books and comic strips.

The Fashion Design course begins with instruction on how to draw the standard fashion figure, which will be used as a base for a series fashion sketches and illustrations. As students develop their drawing skills, they investigate historical and contemporary fashion and use it as a resource for their own fashion designs. Finally, using the fashion figure, students illustrate their own line of garments in detail, using pen, ink, marker, and wash techniques.

In the Fashion Design course students learn the professional techniques used in the construction of garments. Pattern making, sewing, cutting, construction, and finishing techniques are used to create garments in cotton or cotton-type fabrics. Areas of concentration are the garments fit, balance, style, creativity and proportion.

This course introduces students to designing interior and exterior spaces, using conceptual approaches to design problems and solutions. Students learn about rendering, materials, methods, and techniques, as well as color theory. Learned techniques and materials are applied to structural drawings, plans, and elevations.