In the fall of 2001, I started my third and final life drawing class at
American Academy Of Art. It was a rough autumn - between some personal things I was dealing with that had happened over the summer and the
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, I was pretty devastated emotionally. The result of that was I don't remember much about that class. What I do remember, however, was how fantastic the teacher was.
David Jamieson had studied at
the New York Academy Of Art, and taught us in a way that was different and more detailed than what had been done before. David , in addition to doing multiple poses, also had us work on a single pose over the course of one week. That means that we had the same model and he or she would hold the same pose for 3 1/2 hours a night, three nights a week. This made for some more accurate drawings on our part, because we were forced to slow down and really observe the figure.
I have 2 regrets about this class. The first is that I feel like I sleep-walked through it and was unable to pay closer attention to what I was doing, and the second is that it didn't go on longer. I think that David was one of the best teachers that I ever had and wish that I could have had more classes with him.
David and his wife, Melinda Whitmore, own and operate the
Vitruvian Art Studio where students can learn the same techniques that these two wonderful people taught me.
