Welcome To Georgetown Atelier
The Georgetown Atelier is an apprenticeship-style school that specializes in traditional drawing and painting. It’s located in Seattle’s historic Georgetown District, renowned for its thriving artistic community. It’s housed in a charming brick and wood building that was once the bottling plant of the old Rainier Brewery.
The Georgetown Atelier offers 4 program tracks to choose from:
Full-Time Comprehensive Program
Full-Time 1 Year Intensive
Full-Time Custom Designed Program *
Part-Time Program
* This option available ONLY if the student has prior training AND has portfolio samples that demonstrate a sufficient level of mastery of applicable areas in order to ‘transfer credit’.
Why Study at Georgetown Atelier, and who this Program is for
The Georgetown Atelier is designed for students who are aiming to achieve a rock-solid foundation in traditional drawing and painting. It’s intended for the aspiring career artist- whether gallery or industry, or for the already practicing artist who needs to take a step back and build a skill-based foundation that was skipped over in prior education.
The Full-Time Comprehensive Program takes roughly 3 years to complete, but it is possible for the especially diligent and hard-working student to achieve their milestones in a shorter time-frame. The part-time program has a general arc of 1 year, but can be lengthened or customized individually. All programs begin with developing drawing abilities.
Students who are able to complete any of these programs, but especially the Comprehensive Program, will have tools at their disposal that can be employed in a variety of professional career paths and will last a life-time.
For aspiring representational Gallery and Portrait Artists: This training is critical. A few years under the mentorship of a capable teacher will save you 10 years of reinventing the wheel and developing bad habits. The disciplines of drawing and painting have evolved over millennia. To not learn from the knowledge base of our artistic forefathers is simply inefficient.
The untrained artist will often worry that learning a methodological practice (classical education), will somehow inhibit their creativity.
A classical foundation is meant to be flexible: when fluency has been achieved, it can be used as a spring-board to expand upon. The Georgetown Atelier curriculum is much more about how to visually problem-solve and think critically then about following rules.
Most great artists who have stood the test of time learned their fundamental working methods in a studio environment, and then expanded on that skill base to achieve a unique voice. Many artists find originality through bending ‘rules’ or methods in a personal way.
For aspiring Illustrators or Industry professionals in Games and Film: This training will provide you with a skill base that will give you an edge over other candidates competing for the same positions. The instructor Tenaya Sims worked in the video games industry for several years (Activision/Treyarch, and Eidos/Crystal Dynamics), and has first-hand experience of how important and respected traditional skills are in that industry. Almost all applicants will possess solid working knowledge of applicable software, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, Zbrush, etc. Often what separates one candidate from another are their traditional skills.
For aspiring teachers: The curriculum at Georgetown Atelier is designed around the premise of simplifying complex practices into managable steps. These steps not only provide an efficient way of learning, but also a template for teaching. A good artist is not necessarily a good teacher, and instructor Tenaya Sims has worked hard throughout his teaching career cultivating his communication abilities.
Curriculum Progressions
All programs follow the same basic progression, but have different timelines and milestones. Visit the ‘Curriculum’ section under the Info category, or click Here for more detailed information on the content of the curriculum.
Comprehensive Program:
Year 1: Drawing
Year 2: Monochromatic Painting/ Warm-Cool Painting, and Limited Palette Painting
Year 3: Full-color Painting
Year 4 (Optional): Students are given the opportunity to continue into a 4th year as a full-time student, or as a mentored student on a part-time basis.
1 Year Intensive:
This program mirrors the 1st year of the comprehensive program, except students spend the first 2 semesters drawing, and the 3rd in Monochromatic Painting.
Part-Time Program
This program follows the same progression as the Full-Time Comprehensive track, except it is more abbreviated. It meets weekly on Tuesdays during academic semesters and is all day (9:30-12:30 figure, 1:30-4:30 lectures and afternoon projects). Compared to many classes, this program it is quite comprehensive, but compared to the full-time tracks at Georgetown Atelier, it doesn’t not have the same level of depth and benefits of an immersive program.
Schedule
Each academic year at the Georgetown Atelier runs from mid-September to the end of June, with a three week Winter break and a one week Spring break.
Mondays-Friday mornings (9:30am-12:30pm) students work from the live figure. After lunch (12:30pm-1:30pm) students work on their individual curriculum projects (1:30pm-4:30pm). Fridays afternoons are ‘free’ blocks where students can experiment in areas outside of their current stage of curriculum if they wish (an opportunity to refresh the ‘inspiration reserves’).
Tuesdays and Thursdays are the instructor’s teaching days, and he is present for the duration of the day to work with students individually as well as with the class to give lectures and demonstrations.
Full-time students have their own studio space within the atelier which they have twenty-four hour access to.
About the Instructor: Tenaya Sims
Tenaya is a uniquely qualified teacher and designed the program at Georgetown Atelier around his diverse background. Tenaya not only brings a background of extensive training as a classical artist, but also as an industry professional.
Tenaya began his traditional studies with Jeff Watts at the Watts Atelier, and attended classes for over a year. He continued his training with Juliette Aristides at the Aristides Classical Atelier at the Gage Academy of Art. There he trained full-time for 4 years and graduated from the program. Tenaya has also studied with artists Robert Liberace and Steven Assael.
While in the Aristides Atelier he won several awards at the Best of Gage Academy Annual Competitions, a scholarship award from the Art Renewal Center’s scholarship competition, and others including the DeZordo Foundation and Stanley Wright Foundation awards.
Tenaya worked for 6 years as a successful industry professional. He worked as a storyboard artist, character concept artist, lead texture artist, among other roles at various companies that produce xbox and playstation games. These companies include Eidos (Crystal Dymanics) and Activision (Treyarch). Tenaya also worked with Randy Pausch at Carnegie Mellon University when the Virtual Worlds software ‘Alice’ was being developed, and was asked to role-model for other artists in the first Building Virtual Worlds class at CMU.
Tenaya also holds a B.F.A in painting from Carnegie Mellon University.
Tenaya has been teaching for over 10 years, and in addition to the Georgetown Atelier also teaches at Whidbey Island Fine Arts Studio and Gage Academy of Art. He has also taught at Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, and workshops in California and Montreal. Tenaya has shown his work at various galleries in the Northwest and has been featured in International Artist and Southwest Art Magazine.
Please visit the Gallery section of this website and select ‘Instructor Gallery’ to see samples of his work.
