The Jerusalem Studio School

The Jerusalem Studio School was not an easy place to find when we first arrived.  At first glance, the building looks more like a cross between a strip mall and an office park, and the only sign for the school is this small plaque in the center of the building next to one of the elevators (there are three elevators in three different parts of the building, four entrances, and not all elevators go to the top floor). Inside the building is more like an office building, it is across the street from a mall, and located in the more industrial southern part of Jerusalem.

The school is on the 5th floor with a great north facing view of Jerusalem.  On warm days we spend most of our lunch breaks out on the balcony.  

The school is pretty small, but there is plenty of space for everything we need.  Just inside the front door is a room with the two fourth year student's studios.  From the front door you walk down an entry way into the main area that has our break area, kitchen, and the reception desk. 

If you go to the left from this main room you enter the studios for the third year students, and a computer room.  If you go the right you can either go down a short hall to the bathrooms, sinks and shelves where first and second year students keep all of their supplies, or you can go into the main studio.

The first day of class started with an all day lecture by the head instructor, Israel Hershberg, where he gave us a slide lecture on his beliefs about art and his expectations on what we should be trying to achieve in our drawings at the school.  He showed us images of drawings by several artists he felt are excellent examples of his theories such as Edwin Dickinson and Thomas Eakins.  Israel Hershberg comes into class every other Tuesday, and every week we have two other teachers, Oleg Lissin who comes in on Wednesdays, and Nicole Ardiles who comes in on Sundays.  For the first half of the school year, we work exclusively in charcoal, and in January we make the transition to oil painting.  For the first few months all drawings were done from the model in natural light.  In the beginning, poses were much shorter, 5 minutes to 30 minutes; then after about a month we moved on to two hours poses, and then we did drawings from a pile of junk for two weeks.  Next we started all day poses, then a week long pose and will start a month long pose on December 24th.  After this month long pose we begin painting.  We were encouraged to work on small areas in the beginning, getting the proportion and measurements perfect. Then as we have more time we start working on more of the figure and/or adding spots of value to give a sense of light and dark. The whole time we are trying to think abstractly, translating what we are seeing into the language of drawing, without getting distracted with identifying/naming the object we are drawing.  Often the drawings start out very abstract and as time permits, more and more of the figure is revealed.