San Diego - Open Life Drawing Studios list

A short list of open life drawing workshops in San Diego. Send me a note via the red "Contact Me" button, if you want a workshop added to the list.

Figure Drawing-Vista CA,

Vista Art Foundation Gallery 204. 
204 Main Street, Vista, CA
Corner of North Indiana and Main Street

Wednesdays: 6-9pm
$10 fee
Uninstructed Life Drawing Open Studio.
Organizer: Judy

Purpose: Adding to the list of Life Drawing sessions in North County. gives the artist the option to practice an additional evening; Wednesday nights. This session will not conflict with the other open Life Drawing classes in our area, which are Studio2ndStreet and Encinitas Library. Drawing exercises the creative side of the brain, which improves their creativity in all artistic media. All levels are invited, all media welcome, Bring Your Own Supplies. BYOS

Sketchbook Sessions: San Diego

Wednesdays: 6-9pm
No fee to draw.
Uninstructed sketchbook drawing. Open to public. All skill levels welcomed.
Organizer: Paul Davies and Eddie Holly 

Sketchbook Session: San Diego Artists are a mix of professional artists and beginning art lovers currently working to create video games, concept art for movies, tee shirts, books, magazines and comics, all dedicated to supporting the arts in San Diego. They meet once a week in San Diego, to draw in their sketchbooks and socialize. Facebook Link

Watts Atelier

171 Calle Magdelena Suite 103, Encinitas, CA. 92024
Phone: (760) 753-5378

Fridays: 7 pm-10 pm

Uninstructed Life Drawing Open Studio.
Model Fee:
Jeffery Watts

Watts Atelier of the Arts is located in the quiet beach town of Encinitas, CA, 30 miles north of San Diego. The Atelier was founded by Jeffrey R. Watts in 1992 as an intimate studio environment now operated by Mr. Watts and a core of 8 professionals in the areas of representational drawing, painting, sculpture and illustration. Watts Atelier has been modeled after the studio atelier of nineteenth century Europe.


Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art

The Ruby Room.
 1271 University Ave (between Richmond St & Vermont St)
3rd Saturday of every month: 3 pm-6 pm
A fun drink and draw, with games and racy themed costumed models.
$10 admission

We’ll be combing San Diego to find the most beautiful burlesque dancers, delicious fetish models, spunkiest Rollergirls, drag queens, drag kings, belly dancers, and the most rippling hunks of man. Then we let you draw them for three hours. Interspersed with posing are ridiculous drawing contests (best left handed drawing? Best incorporation of a woodland critter?) where you can win alcohol and fancy prizes.
Dr. Sketchy’s is the little Brooklyn event that became a movement. Founded in 2005 by artist Molly Crabapple, Dr. Sketchy’s asked a simple question. Why can’t drawing people be sexy?

From its humble Brooklyn beginnings, Dr. Sketchy’s now has 100+ branches around the globe, including Hollywood, London, Tokyo, Rome, and Melbourne. Since it’s successful launch during Comic Con 2007, Dr. Sketchy’s San Diego branch has been going strong each month, featuring everyone from burlesque beauties to professional dancers to hunky male models.
YOU BRING: Your sketchpad, your drawing implements, some cash for liquid inspiration
WE PROVIDE: Hot models…Drinks…Drawing!

21 AND UP

North Park Open Studio Figure Drawing Group


4044 Idaho Street. 
San Diego, CA 92104
Thursdays: 10 am to 1 pm.
Uninstructed Life Drawing Open Studio.
Model Fee:

Saturdays: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Uninstructed Life Drawing Open Studio.
Model Fee: $5

We are a casual group professional artists, art students and hobbyist that meet at the North Park Recreation Center every Thursday from 10am to 1pm and Saturday mornings from 9:15am to 12:15pm to practice in classical life drawing with a live model.

We provide chairs and tables, but you must bring your own art supplies. We start with 2 minutes gestures, then 5 minute poses, a 10 minute pose, then followed by 20 minutes poses until the end. The last Thursday and Saturday of every month is one long pose after the gestures. No photography of the model is allowed.

If painting with oils, “Gamsol” or odorless Turpenoid are recommended. Currently space is limited so first come first serve. Thursday mornings are a lot less crowded than Saturday mornings.

Free Parking.

You must be 18 years of age or older.

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If you know of more open life drawing studios in San Diego, please contact me, and I'll add them to this list.
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Updated: Feb.2015

Life Drawing - Lizz in Symmetry

Tuesday Nights, I teach a Life Drawing Workshop at Sony, for the artists and animators to practice their old school drawing techniques.

the Mirrored Image Exercise:

Symmetric 10 minute poses. Our model, Lizz, posed for 10 minutes, then turned 90° or 180°, so we could draw her from the other side for another 10 minutes.

The object of the exercise is to get a sense of the figures dimensionality. Parts of the figure hidden in one pose are revealed in the next. The artists use the first drawing as a size reference, while developing the second drawing.

Keeping the light in the same position helps the artists see the light and shadows change as the model moves. This gives them a chance to indicate how the lighting changes on the same figure. If everything works out, the result is a symmetric image with the same light source.




I sit with the artists and demonstrate each exercise right along side them. Hopefully, learning by osmosis is possible.

10 minute demo drawing done with colored pencil on 50 pound Canson sketch paper, 18" x 24", by Graham Smith.

Sketchbook Jam - Mary Fleener & the Wigbillie's

Mary Fleener & Paul Therio by Graham Smith.

I took my recycled grocery bag sketchbook to the Friday Night Sketchbook Jam, up in Encinitas, California a while back.

Underground comic artist Mary Fleener played with her band the Wigbillie's, while local artists drew them in our sketchbooks - another pretty nice Friday night in Southern California.

Mary Fleener and Paul Therio sang the blues, played the hell outta some old songs, and kept the protest song vibe alive. The rest of us enjoyed their music, painted, created drawings and a good time was had by all. Special thanks to Studio 2nd Street for putting all this together.

Listening to the music gets my pen going, and since it's Friday night, I draw without planning. I just grab whatever is in my bag and start drawing in my homemade recycled brown paper sketchbook.

The drawing at the top of Mary Fleener and Paul Therio was drawn with the skinny end of a Tombo Brush Pen unless I'm mistaken and it's really a Faber-Castell PITT Artists Brush Pen. The drawing of Mary playing, in blue, was created with a plain old Optiflow roller ball pen from Staples. I drew Van playing the mouth harp with black colored pencil from Blick and General's white charcoal pencil. Paul's portrait was drawn with a Caran D'ache woodless graphite pencil 6B. The roller ball pen came out one more time to draw Cindy Lee Berryhill singing and playing her guitar. The recycled sketchbook is about 7 x 10 inches.

Cindy Lee Berryhill

Singer-songwriter, and early anti-folk proponent, Cindy Lee Berryhill opened the night debuting an emotionally wrought, early version of "Beloved Stranger" in a very personal performance, making this a very special night.

Recycled Sketchbooks

I like to make paper sketchbooks from used grocery store bags. Recycling.

Next time you are asked,"Paper or plastic?" The correct answer is paper. Start saving those paper bags. Simply cut the paper handles off and slice the paper bags up to a handy size. I like to use small binder clips to hold all the pages to a piece of cardboard. Making your own sketchbooks is fun, you can make them any size, plus they are free!

Here are the first 2 drawings in this recycled paper sketchbook. I used colored pencil, graphite pencil and white charcoal for these 2 quick drawing of Dawn working on her laptop.

Recycled paper sketchbook, cardboard cover, binder clips hold the whole thing together.