Karen Wray Gallery: Beginning Drawing With Jared Krupp

Submitted by Carol A. Clark
on April 8, 2022
- 6:20 pm

Artist Jared Krupp is teaching Beginning Drawing at the Karen Wray Gallery, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Wednesdays, starting April 13 – June 1. Sign up by calling 505.660.6382 or going into the gallery at 1247 Central Ave. Courtesy/M. Audette

By MANDY AUDETTE

This popular class will teach you the fundamentals so you can draw anything

Local artist Jared Krupp is teaching Beginning Drawing at the Karen Wray Gallery, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Wednesdays, April 13 through June 1.

“It’s really all about the fundamentals,” Krupp said.

After teaching art for 20 years, he knows that success comes from the fundamentals. If you have a strong foundation of perspective, shading and lighting, you can draw anything.

The class is $215, plus supplies.

Last year the class sold out and the limited seats are filling up. You can register by calling 505.662.6382 or stopping by the gallery at 1247 Central Ave, Suite D-2, in Los Alamos.

“I’m not trying to teach you how to draw, I’m trying to teach you how to see,” Krupp said.

During the class you will meet your four new “best friends” in art: the circle, the square, the cylinder and the cone, and variations of those shapes.

If you can look at complex shapes like faces, and torsos and shoulders, and break them down into simple shapes, it’s a lot less intimidating, he said. The fundamental shapes are your building blocks, and during this class you will learn how to work with them.

One of the students in the class last year was Reva Heron, a painter who took classes from Karen Wray and has her work at the gallery. She passed away last year.

After Heron took the class, she told Jared, “I had a pretty heavy brain injury a few years ago, and the world didn’t really make sense to me when I looked at stuff. After taking your class and really understanding the one- and two-point perspective, and how everything in the world exists, I have a new perspective, and I kind of understand the world a little better.”

Learning these drawing skills is the fastest way to become a better painter

Last year, several painters joined the class and raved about how great it was to understand how to place things into a drawing. They felt like the one thing they were lacking was the ability to draw.

Painters need a strong foundation of drawing skills, because without it, they put a lot of time and effort into a painting only to realize it doesn’t look right.

It’s usually because they need to understand things like:

How one-point perspective or two-point perspective works;
How to shade a square that then turns into their barn to show where the light is coming from;
How to shade a circle so that it looks like an apple or a plump cheek;
And … What about NOSES?

These are all things that you learn with pen and ink or with pencil, before dealing with color.

Have your own “aha moment”

Krupp said that he loves helping people reach the point where they say, “Aha! I can do this!”

Once you master the simple techniques of drawing and shading those four basic shapes, you will quickly realize that you can pretty much draw anything.

It will look like how it exists in the world.

The class takes the frustration out of drawing

Krupp said he has felt the frustration of not getting the results he was looking for and you can benefit from his experience learning things the hard way.

When he was in high school he loved to draw but didn’t have the skills to go to an art college.

Instead Krupp went to UC Irvine with vague plans to find a different path but after a year and a half he decided he really did want to pursue art … but he needed to get better so he could make it into an art program.

“I went back to the basics,” he said.

He enrolled in Pasadena City College and studied there for a year.

“I swallowed my pride and took beginning drawing, beginning perspective, 2D drawing, 3D drawing, and worked my way through those fundamental courses, and I got a strong, fundamental background,” Krupp said. “I decided this is what I’m going to teach because this is what was missing in my work. And this is, I believe, what’s missing in most people’s work.”

After taking those drawing classes, Krupp’s work was at a whole new level and doors were opening for him. He got accepted into the art program at Cal State Long Beach, where he studied with Betty Edwards, the author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

“For me, it’s the encyclopedia. It’s the book that changed things for me, because the exercises are very approachable, and not intimidating,” Krupp said. “I don’t use the book exclusively but I’ve handpicked a few projects or exercises that I think work.”

Krupp transferred to Cal State Northridge, where he got his degree and also studied at a private school called The Animation Institute in Los Angeles where he studied with Glenn Villpu and Karl Gnass who have both trained Disney artists around the world. He also took a number of classes at a school called Associates in Art, founded by Mark Westermoe where he was taught by some of the great artists in the industry.

Jared taught art for 15 years, specializing in helping students prepare for a career in art

Jared and his wife Stephanie moved to Los Alamos a little a year ago, pulling into town April 15, 2021. They had been living in Ventura, Calif. for about 15 years where he was a school teacher at Montclair Prep and at The Albert Einstein Academy in Santa Clarita, where he served as head of the art department.

The Albert Einstein Academy was near the California Institute of the Arts, which has a high school arts program and a summer arts program for high school students. Krupp said that one of his proudest moments as a teacher was helping several students further their art careers by helping them get into those programs.

Unfortunately, Albert Einstein Academy closed because of financial issues. Krupp hadn’t found a new full-time art teaching job and so he found a creative solution. His friends owned an Italian restaurant in Oxnard, Calif. where they preserved 14 old farmhouses from the turn of the 20th century and brought them to a square, which they called the Heritage Square. The restaurant was on the top floor, and they told Jared that they wanted to renovate it and make it into a unique space. So they gutted it and turned it into a speakeasy bar, and it was very successful.

When COVID hit, like so many people around the world, he had to completely change his plans

“I was at a crossroads,” Krupp said, “and my wife’s mom and dad live here in White Rock, and we just decided that California was getting too darned crowded and too darned expensive, and we were ready for a change. So, we packed up and came out to White Rock, New Mexico. We just thought it was a good time to start over.”

His wife, who has a background in pharmaceutical sales, got a job at the lab. Krupp got a job teaching at Turquoise Trail Charter School in Santa Fe. Turquoise Trail is an elementary school that just started to have a middle school. Krupp is creating a program for the older students who will matriculate up into high school.

“That’s really my forte, working with older students who want to prepare for a career in art,” Krupp said.

He also has a job working at the Blue Window, which is Karen Wray’s favorite restaurant (she and her husband Bill go there every day!).

Jared explained, “We just started talking, and Karen heard that I was an artist that taught these strong art fundamentals, and that’s really what she was looking for … so she said, “Let’s do it”.

Sign up today because the class starts soon, and is filling up fast

The class is limited to 10 students so that everyone can get personal attention. Sign up by calling 505.660.6382 or going into the gallery at 1247 Central Ave., in Los Alamos.

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