We offer an integrated programme of classes in:

WESTERN CLASSICAL NATURALISM

ICON PAINTING

TRADITIONAL PROPORTION AND DESIGN/SACRED GEOMETRY

Each is designed as a compliment to the other. For example, all figurative drawing and painting will benefit in compositional design if they take a course in sacred geometry. A training in iconography will help those specialising in the Western tradition to imbue their work with a grace and flow of line and give each composition a balance and unity. Traditionally, the best icon painters draw from nature as well, for it helps them to understand how to integrate the stylistic elements of, for example, an the icon of a saint to the human figure.

Drawing like the Old Masters – Western classical naturalism
Tutors: Ruth Beloe and David Clayton, both trained in Florence
We teach courses in the methods idealised naturalism of the Old Masters that developed out of the Renaissance and the Baroque. This is rigorous and systematic method of drawing known as an Academic training, and it dominated art until the end of the 19th century. Artists who had an academic training of this type include Velazquez, Van Dyck and Degas. In accordance with the traditional academic methodology, at the core of the training is drawing of casts of statues, observation of the human figure directly, and the study of work by the past Masters of the tradition.

Because this is a rigorous method of teaching, everyone who undergoes this training will see their drawing improve quickly. Drawing from the observation of nature is the basic skill that underlies all the visual arts, and we recommend that all students plan on studying these courses at some stage. Aidan Hart, who oversees the teaching of the icon painting at the ResSource School of Art, asserts that the best iconographers are those who can draw well directly from the observation of nature.

Icon Painting
Tutors: David Clayton and Aidan Hart
Now seen as the traditional art of the Eastern Church, this form of sacred art has a fully developed symbolism that was the basis of all Western Christian art up to the Romanesque. We teach iconography in accordance with the traditional principles that were employed by the great Masters, such as Rublev, and still used today in the Greek and Russian churches.

Traditional Proportion and Design/Sacred Geometry
Tutor: Tom Bree
The principles of sacred number and proportion were known by all artists in the West up to the Enlightenment. These principles of harmony and proportion produced an abstract art form of geometric art that was a tradition in itself in the West called opus sectile or cut work (and it is still very much part of the Islamic tradition of art today). They were traditionally seen also as a set of principles that define the order that underlies all creation, and as such can be applied in many other aspects of human activity. In the context of art they can be incorporated into compositional design and architecture.
Read David Clayton’s article: The Art of the Spheres – sacred proportion and geometric art.

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