ARTS + ARCHITECTURE
DRAWING INSPIRATION / VENICE SEPTEMBER 2026
ARTS + ARCHITECTURE / DRAWING INSPIRATION
Arts + Architecture [A+A] international education travel program focused on the allied arts of architecture, drawing, painting, and sculpture. This travel program recognizes the long-standing tradition and value of the physical experience of travel and drawing research as an integral part of a designer’s education. In short, we call it Drawing Inspiration.
Fall 2026 the A+A program will offer a week of drawing and watercolor painting in Venice in the Veneto. We will be inspired by Architectural masterpieces of Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio to the 20th-century creations of modern master Carlo Scarpa. Master painters Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Bellini, and Carpaccio defined the Venetian style and can still be viewed throughout the city.
The A+A program is led by Program Director SEÁN MCARDLE with special lectures and tours provided local Italian historian.
A+A Drawing Inspiration workshop participants will be provided a sketchbook and instructed in the fundamentals of sketching, watercolor, and architectural geometry. As inspiration, Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 - 1519) started with journals when he was 26 years old and continued to write an average of 3 pages a day producing well over 20,000 pages of notes and sketches spanning across 50 different notebooks related to whatever topics interested him – architecture, proportion, perspective, painting, philosophy, landscape, geography, geology and inventions, and other topics.
“I am still learning…the greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
FALL 2026 /
The A+A DRAWING INSPIRATION 2026 Calendar Year September 2026.
We believe in Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) statement “I am still learning…the greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
The workshop will include morning instruction in topics related to traditions of architecture including hand-drawing, perspective studies, proportion, history, innovations, and materials, and methods. After lunch, students will have the afternoons to apply the morning lessons in their sketchbook in the rich context of Venice.
Venice
The city of Venice continues to charm with its unique topography spread over 118 small islands separated by canals and connected by over 400 bridges. Known as “La Serenissima” (the Most Serene Republic), the city-state of Venice was already powerful by the year 1000 and was a leading political, cultural, and commercial center. Architectural masterpieces dating to the Medieval and Renaissance periods, like the Doge’s Palace, the Piazza and Basilica of San Marco, and the beautiful Ponte Rialto and Ponte del Sospiri (The Bridge of Sighs), reinforce the charm of the city. Works by the master painters Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Bellini, and Carpaccio defined the Venetian style and can still be viewed throughout the city.
Venice Tours
Gallerie dell'Accademia / Doge's Palace / Vicenza Teatro Olimpico by Andrea Palladio Villa / La Rotonda by Andrea Palladio, Castelvecchio Museum and Brion Cemetery Water Pavilion in Verona by Carlo Scarpa.
Veneto
A major center of the Veneto (the mainland region around the urban archipelago of Venice). An important locus of intellectual life during the 15th and 16th centuries, the area has an abundant architectural heritage – from the works of local Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio to the 20th-century creations of modern master Carlo Scarpa.
“Who are we, each one of us, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?”
ARTS + ARCHITECTURE /
INTEREST
Please complete the form below for program updates or questions / Grazie Mille