Two Reclining Women on Sofas (sanguine on prepared paper with erased lights, 15 x 18) Ranging in age from their 20s to 40s, many of Jacobs’ students arrive at Jacobs’ École Albert Defois for Restructured Realism from other disciplines, and nearly all will have registered years earlier for this Having encountered students who resist training, Jacobs also advises his new group to first try to understand everything he is teaching before questioning whether his instruction is validated by comparison with the model. He tells them to put aside notions of achieving smoothly finished work for the next several months, and to focus instead on understanding what he is trying to teach-the time-honored principles of drawing and painting that will give them the tools they will need to make beautiful paintings.
The desire to do so, he feels, is putting the cart before the horse. Jacobs takes a few minutes to describe to his new students what is ahead, and to caution them not to concern themselves too much with making beautiful paintings and drawings. Newly repaired easels stand around the room, and still-life arrangements line the walls. Ten students, the majority American, assemble in a one-room studio with a cement floor, drop ceiling, and a bank of north-facing windows. Here, we revisit the experience of this unique and influential course. Jacobs retired from teaching several years ago, but his legacy lives on. Learn Essential Principles of Figure Drawing Renaissance Materials & TechniquesįIRST, MASTER THE FIGURE, WITH TED SETH JACOBS BY A'DORA PHILLIPSįor many years, on the first Monday in March, Ted Seth Jacobs’ eight-month program, Restructred Realism, would commence at a crossroads in the Loire Valley.