“Learning to get comfortable with not knowing is one of the last stages of an artist’s development. That’s how you start to develop the habit of questioning and seeking, which can propel and sustain you outside the classroom.”

David Leffel’s Self-Portraits: A Visual Journey of Insight is now available as an eBook.

Life drawings, known as académies, served as a conduit for the European academic training nineteenth-century American art students craved. Pam Koob writes about their creation and significance during the Art Students League’s early history.