The Arts Council partners with the Princeton University Art Museum to provide free online art-making experiences. Classes are taught by artist-instructor Barbara DiLorenzo over Zoom, so participants can join live from home. With an emphasis on drawing with pen or pencil on paper, each week’s lesson will be inspired by sculpture works in the Museum’s collections.
To watch recordings of previous lessons, click here.
This live art-making class is inspired by this antelope-shaped headdress or adoné, created by a Kurumba artist in the early 20th century. This protective, graceful antelope is worn in dances to mark major lifecycle events, such as funerals and the periods before the first rains and the beginning of the planting season, in the Kurumba region of Burkina Faso. This particular headdress is covered in delicate decorative spots and reveals slight wear on the neck and snout, where the dancer would have grasped the piece, in order to hold on to it while dancing.
In this session, we will draw the headdress and focus on linework.
Free registration via Zoom here. (When prompted, click to sign in as “attendee.”)
This event will include live closed captions in both English and Spanish. English captions are available directly in the Zoom toolbar by clicking the “CC” icon. To access Spanish-language captioning, open Streamtext, where you can select “Spanish” to see the live captioning.
Para acceder a los subtítulos en varios idiomas, ingrese al seminario web de Zoom durante un evento en vivo, luego abra un navegador web separado para visitar esta página donde puede seleccionar “español” o el idioma de su elección.
Materials list for drawing classes can be found here.
LATE THURSDAYS! This event is part of the Museum’s Late Thursdays programming, made possible in part by Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970. Additional support for this program has been provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Curtis W. McGraw Foundation.
Artwork: Kurumba artist, Headdress (Adoné), early 20th century. Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Mary Trumbull Adams Art Fund.
This live art-making class is inspired by a ceramic figure of a Maya warrior goddess who came to be known as Chak Chel (Great Rainbow). Armed with a shield, this fearsome goddess and patron of midwives appears as a warrior. Her snarling mouth and jaguar ears, which are attached to hair bound with ribbons, convey a sense of dread to her enemies.
In this session, we will draw our own depictions of Chak Chel and explore the elements of drawing a figure.
Free registration via Zoom here. (When prompted, click to sign in as “attendee.”)
This event will include live closed captions in both English and Spanish. English captions are available directly in the Zoom toolbar by clicking the “CC” icon. To access Spanish-language captioning, open Streamtext, where you can select “Spanish” to see the live captioning.
Para acceder a los subtítulos en varios idiomas, ingrese al seminario web de Zoom durante un evento en vivo, luego abra un navegador web separado para visitar esta página donde puede seleccionar “español” o el idioma de su elección.
Materials list for drawing classes can be found here.
LATE THURSDAYS! This event is part of the Museum’s Late Thursdays programming, made possible in part by Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970. Additional support for this program has been provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Curtis W. McGraw Foundation.
Artwork: Maya, Chak Chel (Great Rainbow), 800–1000 CE. Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of J. Lionberger Davis, Class of 1900. Photo: Bruce M. White
This live art-making class is inspired by the Chinese wooden sculpture Guanyin seated in Royal-ease pose, which was carved and painted around 1250, during the Southern Song dynasty. The Buddhist deity Guanyin is the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion: a figure who has achieved the highest aim in Buddhism, enlightenment, and may pass into nirvana or freedom from suffering. This statue’s flexible pose of rajalilasana, or royal ease, with a raised leg and casually draped arm, became associated with the deity in the late ninth century.
In this session, we will draw this sculpture of Guanyin with a focus on rendering the drapery and relief designs.
Free registration via Zoom here. (When prompted, click to sign in as “attendee.”)
This event will include live closed captions in both English and Spanish. English captions are available directly in the Zoom toolbar by clicking the “CC” icon. To access Spanish-language captioning, open Streamtext, where you can select “Spanish” to see the live captioning.
Para acceder a los subtítulos en varios idiomas, ingrese al seminario web de Zoom durante un evento en vivo, luego abra un navegador web separado para visitar esta página donde puede seleccionar “español” o el idioma de su elección.
Materials list for drawing classes can be found here.
LATE THURSDAYS! This event is part of the Museum’s Late Thursdays programming, made possible in part by Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970. Additional support for this program has been provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Curtis W. McGraw Foundation.
Artwork: Chinese, Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), Guanyin seated in Royal-ease pose, ca. 1250. Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Carl Otto von Kienbusch Jr., Memorial Collection. Photo: Bruce M. White
This live art-making class is inspired by a pair of painted tomb guardians from the Tang Dynasty. These spirit tomb guardians (zhenmushou) clutch snakes in their hands while subduing animal demons atop rock plinths. The human-faced guardian has one taloned foot on the back of a screaming deer-demon; the lion-faced guardian is seen pouncing on a squealing, green-spotted, winged boar-demon.
This pair represents the final stage of the long sculptural evolution of tomb guardians, when sculptors began to depict the guardians’ roles as defenders against demons. In this session, we will draw the tomb figures and focus on how to tackle a complex subject: balancing the art of drawing big shapes while also rendering fine details related to angles and placement of the objects.
Free registration via Zoom here. (When prompted, click to sign in as “attendee.”)
This event will include live closed captions in both English and Spanish. English captions are available directly in the Zoom toolbar by clicking the “CC” icon. To access Spanish-language captioning, open Streamtext, where you can select “Spanish” to see the live captioning.
Para acceder a los subtítulos en varios idiomas, ingrese al seminario web de Zoom durante un evento en vivo, luego abra un navegador web separado para visitar esta página donde puede seleccionar “español” o el idioma de su elección.
Materials list for drawing classes can be found here.
LATE THURSDAYS! This event is part of the Museum’s Late Thursdays programming, made possible in part by Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970. Additional support for this program has been provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Curtis W. McGraw Foundation.