Second Annual Master Skill Building Challenge, with Donato Giancola

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It is with great excitement that we announce our Second Annual Master Skill Building Challenge, with Guest Juror Donato Giancola.

Our Annual Master Skill Building Challenge is designed to help our students push themselves in their training and help them to become better, more skilled and more proficient artists. With these goals in mind, we have reached out to award winning artists and illustrators to help us with this unique series of student challenges.

The Master Skill Building Challenge is designed to be incorporated with our standard Skill Building Challenges (month-long competitions, broken into four, one-week blocks). Our Master Skill Building Challenge turns our individual month-long competitions into a six-month long, portfolio-building contest, aimed to help our students bring their work to a higher level of finish, and create an academic portfolio of their best and finest works, while utilizing the lessons, reference, and feedback from our Online Program. Students will participate in six individual, month-long challenges, at the end of which they will compose their finished works in a comprehensive portfolio. Students must be enrolled for 6 consecutive months (and must be enrolled by the challenge start date of January 15th, 2017) in order to participate in the back-to-back, monthly challenges, which will be divided into two sections: One for our Drawing Program students, and one for our Full Access students.

While we will delve into the specifics for each individual challenge piece once the competition starts in-earnest on January 15th, we’d like to give you a sneak peak at what you will be completing durring your six month portfolio-building journey..

Drawing Program Participants:

1 skull drawing
1 long head drawing
1 long figure drawing
1 page of quicksketch portrait drawings
1 page of quicksketch figure drawings
1 “student choice” work

Full Access Program Participants:

1 cast study
1 portrait painting
1 figure painting
1 landscape
1 still life
1 “student choice” work

Once all six individual challenges are completed, students will compile their work in a digital portfolio. Our jury, composed of the instructors from our Atelier, will narrow down our finalists. To ensure an “even playing field,” and to put an emphasis on skill building, finalists will be selected based on their overall skill growth throughout the 6 month period. A special guest Juror, which will be a new award-wining Illustrator or Fine Artist each year, will then select the Challenge Winners from our group of finalists. . We are very pleased to announce that our guest juror for the Second Annual Master Skill Building Competition will be award-wining illustrator and painter Donato Giancola.  We are thrilled to have Donato, a master in the imaginative realism field,  join us for the competition and help push our students to new heights.

We at the Atelier also appreciate the dedication our students show to their own learning. Because of this, we would like to acknowledge the participants of our Annual Master Skill Building Challenge in a special way. From all Master Skill Building Challenge submissions, there will be a total of three winners chosen, and two honorable mentions. Prizes will include..

1st Place:

1 Year free full access membership in our online program, Jeff’s Figure Drawing Book, An instructional painting dvd, An original drawing by Jeffrey Watts, blog post feature of the winning artist, and a 1-hour live video coaching session with Jeff Watts

2nd Place

6 Months free full access membership in our online program, Jeff’s Figure Drawing Book, Instructional dvd, and a half-hour live video coaching session with Jeff Watts

3rd Place

3 Months free full access membership, Jeff’s Figure Drawing Book, and an instructional painting dvd

Two “Honorable Mentions” (one from the drawing membership, one from the full access membership)

Jeff’s Figure Drawing Book and an instructional painting dvd

All of us at the Atelier are very excited to begin the new year with this special event. We hope to see many familiar faces from the online program participate, and we look forward to welcoming new students into the learning community. With the Annual Master Skill Building Challenge on the horizon, there is no better time than now to begin your learning journey. Click here to enroll now

We encourage everyone to keep an eye on our blog in the coming days, as we unveil a look at our previous Master Skill Building Challenge winners, and learn about their experiences in our online Atelier.  We will also be taking a look at the works of our Guest Juror, Donato Giancola, and getting a few words of advice from our instructors on how to get the most out of your Master Skill Building Challenge experience.

We’re sure there may be a few of you out there with some questions, and we encourage you to reach out to us through the comments section below, or via our contact page.

All the best, and we look forward to watching everyone’s skills grow with this amazing competition!

Happy Studies,

-The Watts Atelier Team