Each day will include several simple drawing exercises designed to help train the eye and drive home the day’s lessons. In addition these are aimed at helping students to put aside their tape measures and begin to feel comfortable working with proportions. A portion of each day will also be reserved for students to work on their furniture design projects.

Day one

• Warm up drawing exercise – “Armature of the rectangle”
• Lesson topic – basics of proportion – symmetry and contrast
• Group exercise – pull out the major forms and proportional schemes behind a variety of furniture masterworks. 

Day two

• Warm up drawing exercise – Scrolled bracket (drawing a volute)
• Lesson topic – basics of proportion – punctuation, and the classic orders.
• Group exercise – pull out examples of punctuation from master works, construct a couple of simple drawing aids to manipulate punctuation in a design.
  

Day three

• Field trip – Visit two to three architectural sites to view these traditional principles in person, have students make field sketches of details.
• Lesson topic – enhancing a design with ornament or decoration. How the application of ornament (organic forms, geometric, or color) can add to the underlying design.
  

Day four:

• Warm up drawing exercise – Draw an “Attic Base”
• Lesson topic – Theory of moldings – history, use, and application.
• Group exercise – work up a variety of molding combinations based on some historical design texts.
  

Day five:

• Warm up drawing exercise – design a small chest with only a straight edge and dividers, using proportions rather than measurements to flesh out the details.
• Lesson Topic – Light, shadow, properties of color, character, composition, bringing it all together.
• Group exercise – Tricks to using a folding rule as a sector to manipulate proportions on a drawing and for use at the workbench.

You'll need to bring:

• Sketch pad, plain white spiral bound artists pad 9X12 or 12X18. Graph paper is fine also.
• Two pair of dividers, it's handy if they are two different sizes.
• Compass
• 45 degree drafting triangle
• Straight edge, 12" long is fine
• pencil/eraser
• Folding ruler (optional but fun)

Bring in the seed for a furniture project. Can be a page torn from an old magazine, some rough chicken scratches on a napkin, or anything that we can build on to design a piece of furniture.

Note:
We regret that we had to cancel this class. We did not get the enrollment we had hoped for. George would still like to teach at the School and we have a provisionall plan to run a similar class as a three day design seminar in late August 2011.

Class size:   25       Minimum enrollment: 12
Cost:            $495