Skill Building Challenge 23 now live! Cycle 21 and 22 winners announced!

With the close of our Cycle 22 Skill Building Challenge, we are now officially halfway through our Master Skill Building Challenge event, with guest juror Donato Giancola.  We are pleased to announce that our cycle 23 Skill Building Challenge is now live in our student forums, open for all enrolled students to join. As we… Continue reading


Skill Building Challenge Cycle 20 winner announced..!

Cycle 20 Winners Announced! Our Cycle 20 Skill Building Challenge marked the start of our second annual Master Skill Building Challenge, and did so with a classic atelier assignment; Skull drawing and cast painting.  These types of challenges help put the student’s foundational skills to the test, and serve as a wonderful “warm up” as… Continue reading


Skill Building Challenge Cycle 19 Winners Announced!

  Cycle 19 Winners Announced! Our Cycle 19 skill Building Challenge, structured to celebrate the release of our Features and Facial Expressions lessons with Lucas Graciano,  proved to be a unique challenge for students..Not only did participants have to pull from their portraiture skills, they also needed to utilize their own reference and work to… Continue reading


The Winners of the First Annual Master Skill Building Challenge

We are extremely proud to announce the winners of our first annual Master Skill Building Challenge.  This contest, open to all of our enrolled students,  was made up of 6 individual, month-long challenges, and was designed to push participant’s skill sets in order to help them grow as representational artists.  Each student’s final portfolio was then submitted… Continue reading


Skill Building Challenge Cycle 16 now live! Cycle 15 winners to be announced shortly..!

Skill Building Challenge cycle 16 is now live on our student forums!  Head on over to the forums to participate in this exciting Figure Quicksketch/Still life competition, open to all enrolled students of the Watts Atelier Online Program. We saw a fantastic turn out for Cycle 15, and our judges are still working to select… Continue reading


Assignment Grading Inquiry

The education of our students is of the highest importance to us here at the Watts Atelier.  Our dedication to your learning is what led us to create our unique lesson structure and assingment grading system, complete with feedback to help you, our students, excell in your studies. We’ve recently recieved a few reports from… Continue reading


A Message from Watts Support, regarding lesson grades and feedback

To our students, We’ve recently been working with a third party to iron out and fix a few system errors in our grading program. While the fix seems to have solved the initial problems, it seems the update was incompatible with other parts of our system. We’ve been receiving reports that students are no longer… Continue reading


Thank you all for your overwhelming support

“Spanish turkeys,” by Jeffrey R. Watts     In the spirit of the season, we would like to take a moment to thank you all for your overwhelming support of our Atelier and our new Guilds program.  When we first conceived The Guilds  program, we knew we had something special.  Even so, it was humbling… Continue reading


Finishing Touches: New Content Delayed until 2/28

We at the Watts Atelier strive to provide our students with the highest quality online art education available. With that in mind, we are announcing a brief delay in our new content launch for September.  Our Figure and Head Quicksketch courses and new specialty classes will be available a week from their original launch date,… Continue reading


Creating the Zorn Palette

Many of you have asked where the supplemental video for mixing the Zorn palette is. It has been uploaded in the second phase of our portrait painting curriculum. Check it out! Anders Zorn was a Swedish painter who is known not only for his beautiful paintings, but also for his extensive use of a limited palette… Continue reading


Jeffrey Watts Speed Drawing

  On August 31st we will launch Watts Atelier Online with over 250 hours of classes! We captured one of Jeff’s demonstrations for you. The demo took about 45 minutes. In the coming weeks we will post excerpts from Head Drawing Phases I & II.


Watts Atelier Online Launching Soon!

  In just a few weeks, we launch the Watts Online School with over 250 hours of classes. And it’s just the start! Be sure not to miss the launch. We are limiting enrollment initially on a first come basis. You can learn more about the school at: online.wattsatelier.com


Watts Atelier 2012 Instructor and Student Show

[frame] In December we celebrated our 20th year in the education business by hosting a student show at the local Encinitas Library.  The New Library is an incredible facility with a 180 degree view of the Pacific Ocean.  We had a great turn out and the work was impressive.  We showcased instructor and student works demonstrating everything from Graphite to… Continue reading


Annual Watts Atelier Holiday Party – 2012

[frame] Once again we hosted our annual Watts Atelier Holiday shindig celebrating our 20th Anniversary.  I can’t believe it has been that long.  I remember the first one and it had all of 10 to 12 people.  What a difference two decades makes.  Needless to say it went off without a hitch.  Thanks to the generosity of our wonderful instructors we… Continue reading


New iBook Release by Jeffrey R. Watts

[frame] Hope all is well with you all and you had a great Thanksgiving.  Today’s blog post is to announce the release of a recent project that I am really excited about.   I cherry picked some of my favorite Portrait Gestures from over the years and put them into an iBook format so you can zoom in… Continue reading


9 Different Lighting Scenarios You Should Master

[frame] (1) DUAL LIGHTING:  Dual lighting is often used for theatrical purposes where lots of “impact” or drama is needed.  You will see comic artist, visual development artist and illustrators commonly favor this type of lighting.  The lighting is highly effective for this purpose but it should be noted that the use of two light sources will create a… Continue reading


Annual Watts Atelier Holiday Party – 2011

[frame]   I can’t believe we are celebrating our 20th year. Nothing signifies the passing of time more at Watts Atelier than our annual holiday party. It is always great to see old and new students along with their friends and family members. We are continuing our 6th year of doing the instructor round robin… Continue reading


Message from Jeff Watts

[frame]   I would like to welcome you all to the Official Watts Atelier Blog! If you are wondering why I have not posted more often over the years as social media has started to encompass more and more aspects of our lives, I suppose I do not have a quick and easy response other… Continue reading