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.
SEPTEMBER 21-25th 2026 / VENICE + VENETO
September 21-25th 2026 the A+A program will offer a week of drawing and watercolor painting in Venice and Vincenza.
VENICE / ITINERARY
The workshop will include instruction in topics related to traditions of architecture including hand-drawing, perspective studies, architectural geometry, proportion, history, innovations, and materials, and methods. We will apply lessons in drawing and watercolor sketches in the rich context of Venice. We will also will be visiting inspirational buildings and Museums accompanied by a Renaissance Art Historian based in Italy.
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.
VENICE / DIRECTOR + HISTORIAN
The A+A program is led by Program Director SEÁN MCARDLE a polymath with a Master of Arts degree with a focus in Architecture and Building Arts and intensive post-graduate Fine Arts training in the classical methods of drawing, painting, and sculpture. Seán spent his final undergraduate semester studying Architecture in Vicenza, Italy followed by Masters of Building Arts and Architecture. Seán has continued his professional work in the fields of architecture while pursuing classical education in the allied arts of drawing, painting, and sculpture.
The A+A program attendees will be fortunate to be joined by historian PAOLA VOJNOVIC. Paola is a Renaissance Art Historian in Italy with two master’s degrees and more than two decades of research and writing about Renaissance artists, Paola brings an exceptional level of expertise and passion to her work as lecturer, teacher, and tour guide.
“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.”
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.
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?”
