When artist John Horne talks about teaching drawing, he rarely starts with technique. He starts with people.
Over the years, in Metro Atlanta classrooms and studios, Horne has learned that the anxieties students bring with them — fear of failure, fear of not being “good enough,” fear of never getting it right — remain constant across generations. “Only the faces change,” he says. The work of an instructor, in Horne’s view, is not to rank talent or judge outcomes, but to meet students where they are and help them articulate where they want to go.
That approach anchors Horne’s two new offerings at the Sandy Springs Abernathy Arts Center — Figure Drawing: All Levels and Portrait Drawing: All Levels. Both launch next week. Horne describes his classes as mixed-level by design.
“Only by failing and resolving the error will you learn.”
Arts Instructor John Horne
Training on patience and process
Across his youth and adult class, Horne emphasizes habits over shortcuts. He asks students to commit to daily practice, even 20 minutes, and to approach their work with honesty and integrity. Progress, he says, does not happen on a single timeline.
His classes often resemble what he calls a “little red schoolhouse” environment: beginners, intermediate artists, and advanced students working side by side. The diversity of skill levels is intentional. During end-of-class critiques, Horne has watched students absorb insight not only from him, but from each other, learning to see mistakes, corrections, and possibilities in real time.
Mistakes, in Horne’s classes, are not setbacks. “Only by failing and resolving the error will you learn,” he says, framing mistakes as essential data points rather than evidence of inadequacy.
While Horne’s instruction draws from classical traditions associated with Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Albrecht Dürer, his focus is practical rather than reverential. Grids, proportion, perspective, value studies, and composition are tools. Copying master works or working from photographs, he argues, is not derivative when used to train the eye.
“The single most effective tool in the artist studio is the artist’s eyes,” Horne says. He urges students to spend at least half their working time observing the subject, not the paper — an emphasis on seeing accurately before attempting interpretation.
That discipline carries across modes: working from life, from still life, from imagination, and from photography. Each method, he says, develops a different kind of visual judgment and confidence.
“The single most effective tool in the art studio is the artist’s eyes.”
Arts Instructor John Horne
A legacy measured in people
Since 1999, Horne’s students have gone on to teach at local art centers, direct art programs, and attend respected institutions such as Rhode Island School of Design, Parsons School of Design, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, CalArts, and SCAD. He does not describe these outcomes as personal achievements, but as evidence of sustained mentorship.
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“I look. I see. I understand. I apply,” he says, distilling the mindset he encourages students, and himself, to adopt repeatedly. Learning, in his view, never ends. Neither does teaching.
As Horne begins this next chapter at Abernathy Arts Center, the goal remains unchanged: to make the classroom a place where curiosity outweighs fear, where rigor coexists with generosity, and where artists learn not just how to draw — but how to see.