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Igor V. Babailov, Hon.RAA, KStA
The Drawing Skills in Painting
"Even when you Paint you never stop Drawing, only this time you do it with your brush!"
~ Igor V. Babailov, Hon.RAA
Igor V. Babailov's unique 16-year long formal fine art education (1974 -1990) under the Russian Academy of Arts (founded in 1757), especially contributed to his unparalleled skill in academic drawing ( or drawing from life ) which today is a fundamental challenge for many painters.
" ainting does not exist without drawing. It is the outstanding drawing with its perfect values, which makes the best examples of paintings in the History of Fine Art strong and powerful.
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Anyone can copy/modify photos or ready-made images, whether they are black and white or in color (you would not need a solid art education for that...); but it is the skill of working from life and particularly drawing from life, which reveals the artist's true "Masterability." Even when you paint you never stop drawing, only this time you do that with the brush. Drawing from life is the must and the fundamental to learn and to know for anyone, wishing to become a truly Professional Artist and Portrait Painter.
That is the philosophy of the traditional school and such Masters as Bouguereau, Whistler and Serov. And this is the main focus of my workshops with life demos in Oil, Pencil and Pastel, which distinguishes them from the workshops of others.
In Visual Art, I believe, the more Demos of different medium techniques the students see, the more they learn and understand how to approach those mediums in their own works. It is especially helpful to realize that those very different mediums are actually very much related to each other and have a lot in common - they are the 'clothes' on the beautiful anatomically structured human form underneath.
