I studied with and have been greatly influenced by the teaching of #RobertKaupelis, the painter and abstract expressionist. He was an extraordinary teacher…and two books (Learning to Draw and Experimental Drawing) are like him, catalysts that push artists to go beyond the boundaries of mediums and convention. He taught painting at NYU—where I had the chance to study with him. I wasn’t a painter (really, I wasn’t), but I was a student of Robert Kaupelis. I registered semester, after semester, after semester (3 in all, I eventually graduated) for what was really— “The Kaupelis Seminars.” I really had no interest in painting but he was a wealth of experience, talent, and intelligence! I soaked up what he had to say—which was a lot.
SO HOW DID THIS SKETCH COME ABOUT YOU ASK? He directed his class to look at the model posing. (NOTE: THE MODEL in this class WAS Robert Kaupelis!), and then asked his students to close their eyes (“no peeking” he would say) and “begin to draw me” he would say). “rom what?” we asked? “Draw me from your memory. You look at me all the time. What are you seeing?” That’s how this sketch of Robert Kaupelis came to be. When the class finished drawing he came around to look at each student’s work. He walked up to my easel, looked at it and said, “you peeked”. I said, “I did not” ( I hadn’t); he said, “you did”. I said, “I did not”. We got along better after that (LOL). Drawing ‘blindfolded’ in his class let me "see" that the images I “create” take form first in my mind’s eye, and my hands are perhaps just skilled translators of that information. That experience was learning to trust in myself, and the process. His books are amazing.
Learning to Draw: A Creative Approach to Expressive Drawing by Robert Kaupelis
Experimental Drawing, 30th Anniversary Edition: Creative Exercises Illustrated by Old and New Masters by Robert Kaupelis