Add a personal touch to your invitations, placecards, and letters, with a calligraphic font learned in this class designed for both beginning and intermediate students.

The elegance of a hand-lettered invitation, place-card, or letter cannot be matched by a machine. For this reason, the art of calligraphy has survived, despite the availability of today's printing and computer technology.

Explore the basis of abstraction by studying color, line, and shape as they relate to composition. Learn to create exciting and innovative works of art, using a series of drawing and painting exercises designed to examine nontraditional ways of handling traditional materials and subject matter.

Learn how scientists and botanical illustrators at the Smithsonian document plant species and try your hand at drawing a botanical element using scientific illustration methods. Class includes a trip to the exhibition Losing Paradise: Endangered Plants Here and Around the World at the Natural History Museum.

Popular theory on right side brain activity holds that the right brain is primarily responsible for the intuitive understanding of visual and spatial relationships. Designed to improve the way people see and record objects on paper, a set of visual exercises helps build the ability to draw. If you doubt your artistic ability or were told as a child that you could not draw, this is your opportunity to challenge that perception.

Popular theory on right side brain activity holds that the right brain is primarily responsible for the intuitive understanding of visual and spatial relationships. Designed to improve the way people see and record objects on paper, a set of visual exercises helps build the ability to draw. If you doubt your artistic ability or were told as a child that you could not draw, this is your opportunity to challenge that perception.

This course, a valuable introduction for beginners, teaches the basic skills needed as a strong foundation for drawing. Working with a variety of materials and techniques, including charcoal and pencils, students explore the rendering of geometric forms, volume, and perspective, with an emphasis on personal gesture marks.

In this intensive mini-course, students are introduced to the methods botanical artists use to render plant specimens accurately and beautifully. Participants receive step-by-step instruction in preparing a sketch for a botanical watercolor painting.

The depiction of the human form on cave walls and the rendering of the figure throughout history, across cultures and artistic styles, underscore the significance of its continued study. Students make use of this venerated artistic form in this course designed to help develop their skill in capturing the figure on paper.

This course, a valuable introduction for beginners, teaches the basic skills needed as a strong foundation for drawing. Working with a variety of materials and techniques, including charcoal and pencils, students explore the rendering of geometric forms, volume, and perspective, with an emphasis on personal gesture marks.

This course, a valuable introduction for beginners, teaches the basic skills needed as a strong foundation for drawing. Working with a variety of materials and techniques, including charcoal and pencils, students explore the rendering of geometric forms, volume, and perspective, with an emphasis on personal gesture marks.