Sense 2012, ZAFA has worked to offer students on Oahu the highest level of instruction in classical drawing and painting.

Through workshops, lectures, and private lessons, ZAFA provides a place where students have access to traditional techniques and straight forward, systematic methods of approach to drawing, painting, and classical realism.

ZAFA aims to teach the underlying principals of drawing and painting in a clear and concise way that is easy to understand, laying a strong foundation for students of all levels to build upon and continue to improve their skills.  We feel that these underlying principals, such as:  methods for attaining accurate measurements and visual relationships, how to reliably and efficiently organize values within an image, knowing the fundamental tools of composition and understanding the visual language of composition, a systematic and organized method for color mixing and palette organization, transcend medium or subject matter and are essential and learnable tools for any student interested in furthering their art.

The fundamentals of art are not magical. ZAFA can teach you applicable tools and techniques, that once learned, will allow you to draw or paint anything in front of you with a high degree of realism. This may be difficult, this may take time and practice, but this is not mystical. At ZAFA you will be given real world, logical, understandable techniques that will improve your drawing and painting.

Technique and Teaching Practices

The instruction at ZAFA is based upon a systematic progression from simpler projects introducing fundamental concepts to more challenging projects as students improve and are ready to tackle higher level aspects of drawing and painting. The class structure is based around lectures and live demos to explain the days task, then each student starts their own project while the teacher circulates around the room giving one on one critiques and personalized instruction. Throughout the day the instructor will bring the class back together to do additional lectures and demos as the project progresses through different stages.  Each class is structured in such a way that students are able work at their own skill level and benefit from one-on-one instruction focused on the areas they need improvement in. This cumulative learning process and individualized course structure insures that students have a strong foundation on which to build their skills and are not overwhelmed as projects and concept become more challenging. This also allows students of all ages and skill levels to work alongside one another in a class without anyone feeling left behind or held back. In most classes, students are presented with several different difficulty levels of any given project. This is to further allow students to work at their own skill level and not feel held back or overwhelmed.

Through the courses offered here, students are encouraged to first become proficient with proportion, form, value and a high level of craftsmanship and accuracy. After mastering these skills, they move onto the challenges painting provides, such as temperature variation, color mixing, and the unique challenges of using paint as a medium.

In all of the workshops and private lessons taught at ZAFA, the instructor does each project alongside the students as a running demo during the class. Students follow along step by step and are given lectures about each aspect of the process as the class arrives at that stage. This running demo system is a fantastic way to teach visual learners and helps reinforce each lesson as students can see the concepts being executed correctly and successfully in real time.  

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