Structural Head Drawing Academy

You can join the drawing programs at any time. All of the demos are pre-recorded so you can work through them at whatever pace works best for you. The only aspect of the programs that require you to attend at a specific time are the weekly group Discord meetups.

 Yes, all of our programs and the 3 program bundle comes with the option to purchase Lifetime Access.

The lesson videos are available to stream through our website. The program workbooks, reference images, and photos of Brian’s drawings are all available to download.

Unfortunately, one-on-one feedback is the one thing that I can't provide to everyone. Well, specifically, draw-over critiques are the thing that I can't provide to everyone. 

However, if you join one of the group Discord meetups I can give you some verbal feedback and let you know what's going well and what needs some work. You can also post drawings in our Discord to get feedback from other students and I try to answer as many questions there as I have time for. 

I wish I could give everyone draw-over critiques but they are way too time consuming. When I film draw-over critiques they are very thorough and can be anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes long. At my old job I was told to keep the online crits around 5 minutes and it really wasn't enough to be helpful. That's actually part of the reason why I quit and started my own school. Learning online is very different from learning in-person. I don't have time to explain what all of those differences are right now but I wrote some good explanations in the workbook that comes with the programs. What I'm getting at though, is that at 25 to 45 minutes per draw-over critique, it's simply not possible to do that for everyone and it's for that reason that the draw-over critiques will require an additional purchase. We have developed a new product for this called Mentorship With Brian. It's going to cost $200 and you'll get one draw-over critique per week for 5 weeks and the ability to watch the crits for the other students as well. These 5 week critique sessions are also limited to 10 people at a time. We'll be running these critique sessions throughout the year with 2 or 3 week breaks in between them. You may not be able to get feedback on literally every homework assignment this way but I can guarantee that the feedback you do get will be extremely helpful.

The most preferable materials are charcoal pencils, kneaded eraser, and smooth newsprint (It must be smooth. Rough will not work.)

If these supplies are unavailable to you, it is possible to complete all 3 programs with graphite pencils and standard paper. 

I have a guide showing some of the best charcoal pencils on our YouTube channel here. https://youtu.be/1GzE-2UFknI?si=0uqVbJI3xIrfm0ad The video is a few years old and some of the availability of materials has changed, so I will create a new updated guide in the near future.

When learning to draw, the most important thing is ultimately drawing and practicing the concepts you have learned. Charcoal is an ideal medium as it will help you build dexterity and value control that carry over more directly to oil painting and various other mediums, but there is no doubt you can learn to draw at an advanced level with graphite pencils too.

My method of teaching does not have a specific name. It is an analytical approach to figure drawing which incorporates a combination of classical drawing methods which have a lineage connecting back to the Renaissance period through the Golden Age of Illustration. 

I have studied and utilized some of the concepts from the Loomis books although I don’t teach from the Loomis books directly.
I also have a class dedicated to teaching George Bridgman’s anatomy methods at the end of the Structural Anatomy Mastery Program.

The way I teach takes a logical approach to drawing the figure through in-depth study of the anatomy itself and connecting all of that anatomy together through a constructive approach which breaks down the essential forms of the figure into their most basic shapes. 

I studied at Watt’s Atelier of the Arts for 2 years before becoming an instructor there for 7 years. Much of what I have learned comes from my time there, however I have added many ideas of my own over the years as I have come across and solved figure drawing problems in my own way.

One thing I often recommend to students who have limited time for their weekly studies is to watch the demo videos on 1.5 or even 2x speed. You can still retain the information and this speed may in fact be more comfortable for you to watch. Experiment and find out what works best for you.

I still highly recommend setting aside at least 3 hours for each study session (demo and practice).

Consider how much time you would spend if you were to attend an in-person class and plan for a similar time commitment.

When you’re just starting out and trying to choose what to focus on, consider your goals. If you want to be a portrait painter, I recommend going for head drawing right away. If your goal is to become an illustrator, work in the entertainment industry, or anything else that requires figure drawing skills, then you can start with either one. At that point I would recommend choosing the one that seems the most interesting to you.

From a skill building perspective, it doesn't actually matter which one you start with but starting with one as opposed to both is probably a good idea. This will give you a chance to figure out how the drawing programs work and how much time they require before deciding if you want to add another program on top of the one you're already working on or if you should wait until the first one is finished before starting the next one. 

Ultimately you'll have to learn both, but how to navigate that is up to each individual person and what their circumstances allow. 

Short answer:

I recommend studying with us twice per week. 

So that means you would need to set aside 3 hours twice per week as dedicated study times.

Long Answer:

One of the good things about learning online is that you can change things up and create a schedule that works for you, specifically. 

That being said, my recommendation to everyone is to treat these drawing programs as though you are attending classes at an in-person atelier. At an in-person atelier, each class is 3 hours long. The first hour would be dedicated to some warm-ups and the demo and then you would spend the remaining 2 hours focused on your own drawing. I recommend studying with us twice per week. 

So that means you would need to set aside 3 hours twice per week as dedicated study times. If you have more time available to work on your drawings then it's a good idea to do that but I wouldn't recommend trying to work through more than two demos per week. 

With academic studies like these it's good to give your brain a little bit of a break between demos. However, I also recommend drawing in a sketchbook every day as well. There's no set amount of time for this. It could be just 10 or 15 minutes worth of sketchbook time when you wake up or before you go to sleep or it could be a longer effort if you have the time for it. 

The idea is that this will keep your arm and hand moving throughout the week and also reinforce some of the ideas you've been learning in the classes but in a low pressure way. 

Everyone learns differently and over time everyone finds their own way to navigate the demos. The important thing is to maximize the amount of time you can spend drawing. If you only have one day per week available but can study and draw all day, that's just as good as studying for 3 hours twice per week. 

The one thing that doesn't work is when people don't really have any time available but try to make it work by squeezing in 20 minutes of study time here and there. The human body works in a way where we have to repeat various motions over and over to stimulate the muscle and nerve growth that's needed to develop a high degree of dexterity. With 15-20 minute efforts you can learn a lot about drawing on an intellectual level but you'll never quite develop the dexterity that is required to make it all come together on the page. The shorter efforts should be sketchbook studies that supplement your longer studies.

You can definitely work on the head and figure drawing program at the same time if your schedule allows it.

However, I strongly recommend taking the figure drawing program before the structural anatomy program. Structural anatomy is designed to deepen your understanding of the figure and will build upon the concepts and skills you acquire in the figure drawing program.