PAFA and Welcome House

Last Thursday I met up with a friend that goes to the Academy of Fine Arts to attend an model drawing session at PAFA. It was open to the public for a few of ten dollars. Since I haven't had an ample chance to draw since high school it was a good opportunity for me brush up and break out the pencils that where collecting dust in my room.

I had never been to PAFA before so it was an entirely new experience. I had considered PAFA in my college search but I disregarded it as "too tradition" and I felt I was too unsure of my career path to be locked into a strictly art school. But after checking out PAFA I kind of regret writing it off so quickly.

Before the session started, my friend gave me quick tour of the cast hall, which was pretty amazing. One cast was so massive it nearly touched the ceiling and took up a good portion of the room. The foot of the statue was wider than the with of my body and my head barely reached its knee.

A few students where drawing the casts, and one of them showed me that they had complete control over the lightening of the room.

Many rooms and galleries at PAFA are only open to the students so that really limited where my friend could take me, which was very disappointing because I would have loved to check out the sketchbook they with their art vault.

This is probably where I would then compare PAFA to my time at Tyler but alas, I won't be able to do so until the spring. Then it will very be interesting to see how my experience compares with my friend's.

After the drawing session, my friend and I took a small detour to Love Park to check out the "Welcome House" that was still in the process of being set up. It didn't look like much then but I sure it would have been pretty cool to see the artists at work during the day.