Leonard Shapiro, Cape Town

Leonard is a drawing teacher currently based in Cape Town. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (BAFA Honours) degree from the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Michaelis School of Fine Art and a Bachelor of Social Science (BsocSc) degree from UCT, with majors in psychology and sociology.

Leonard currently runs drawing workshops for both academics and anatomy students at medical schools, in order to improve their observation and memorisation skills.  In 2014, he ran a 4 day drawing workshop for senior staff members from UCT Faculty of Health Sciences department of Human Biology, including specialists in cell biology, anatomy and neurology.  In 2015, he taught a group of anatomy students at the UCT medical school to draw. Leonard is also currently co-authoring a paper with Professor Steve Reid at the University of Cape Town on drawing, observation and memorisation as an aid to the learning of anatomy.

Leonard teaches students in the technique of observational (or ‘structural’) drawing, where the objective is the translation of a 3-dimensional form onto a 2-dimensional surface and involves multi-sensory observation and simultaneous drawing.  This method significantly increases the student’s perceptual understanding of the 3-dimensional form of the object and, in the process, the cognitive memorisation of the form of the object occurs.  After studying an object through drawing in this way, at a certain point the drawer-observer is able to retrieve this information directly from their memory without looking at the object.  The form of the object has been accurately observed in its entirety, and consequently memorised.

His website has images and video of anatomy students’ drawings: http://www.lateralleap.co.za/drawing/drawing-workshop-gallery/