FJR

Frank J. Reilly

1906–1967 · United States

Researched by Daniel Bilmes, painter and educator.

Frank Reilly taught a systematic, near-scientific method for drawing and painting the figure, mostly at New York's Art Students League from the 1930s to the 1960s. His system, a successor to his own teacher George Bridgman's, rests on two ideas. For drawing, he used abstract constructions like the six-line figure and the rhythm lines of the head to build form rather than copy it. For painting, he had students pre-mix an "organised palette" with a nine-value neutral gray scale, which gave absolute control over the value of their colours. A painting began with a flat "poster" of light and shadow, so the design read at once. Reilly never published his own books, so his influential method is preserved through the writings of his students, like Jack Faragasso and Doug Higgins.

ProcessConstructive TemperamentMeasured LineageAmerican

Signature moves

Organise the palette with a nine-value gray scale

Pre-mixed a string of nine neutral gray values, black to white, before painting, to use as a control on every other colour.

Why it matters · It takes the guesswork out of value. Mixing a flesh tone to match a specific gray gives absolute control over the light-and-shadow pattern. The painting stands on a settled value foundation rather than on haphazard colour mixing.

Reilly's organised palette (the nine-value neutral string; Grumbacher once sold a "Reilly Neutral" set)

Construct the head with the Reilly abstraction

Drew the head from a system of abstract rhythm lines connecting the key landmarks, built on a circle divided into proportional sections.

Why it matters · Instead of copying features, this builds the underlying structure and flow of the forms. The rhythm lines, connecting the corner of the eye to the wing of the nose and so on, teach the artist to see relationships and make a head that reads as solid.

Jack Faragasso, Mastering Drawing the Human Figure from Life, Memory, Imagination

Begin the figure with six structural lines

Set the core action of a pose with six abstract lines: the head, the spine, the shoulder line, and the relationships between the major masses.

Why it matters · He taught it as "the way to think," not a drawing trick. It makes the artist see the whole gesture and balance before getting lost in detail, so the finished drawing is built around a clear action, not assembled part by part.

Candido Rodriguez, quoted in "Another Look at Frank Reilly", Today's Inspiration, 2010

Start the painting with a flat value "poster"

Blocked the whole canvas in flat, average values in a strict order: the darkest dark, then the shadows, then the lights, then the halftones.

Why it matters · Reilly held that a painting's success rests on this stage. Setting the big, simple light-and-dark pattern first makes the composition read from across the room. Every later piece of modelling and colour sits inside that strong, simple statement.

Reilly's value lay-in, or "poster," documented in the painting curriculum

Run a complete, business-like system

Ran his packed Art Students League classes on a strict schedule with a formal curriculum of lectures, homework, and a logical march from drawing to painting.

Why it matters · Reilly treated art as a craft learnable through a repeatable, near-scientific process. That system demystified painting for thousands of students, handing them a reliable toolkit, above all for the demands of commercial illustration.

Doug Higgins, The Frank Reilly School of Art

Studio

Light: A single, controlled floodlight, set higher than the model to give a clear, consistent pattern of light and shadow. The aim was often to have the figure about three-fifths in light.
Position: Lecturing at a blackboard or demonstrating on a separate surface. He famously refused to touch a student's canvas, calling it the teacher learning to paint at the student's expense.
Session length: Three packed classes a day for nearly three decades at the Art Students League, with long waiting lists. His lectures were formal, and he often taught in a three-piece suit.
Tools: A glass palette with a sheet of fifth-value gray paper underneath to judge values · A pre-mixed nine-value string of neutral grays, plus matching colour strings · Wolfe's carbon pencils or 4B/6B charcoal pencils, sharpened to a chisel edge · A drop of oil of cloves in the paint piles to keep them wet on the palette
Notes: His classes were so large (over 300 students by 1960) that a class monitor kept time and order, and a student might wait months for a direct critique. The system was built to be learned through lectures and observation.

Source: Doug Higgins, The Frank Reilly School of Art; student accounts of the class structure.

Palette

Ground: Canvas or board.
Whites: Titanium White
Earths: Raw Umber · Burnt Umber
Colors: Alizarin Crimson · Cadmium Red Light · Cadmium Orange · Cadmium Yellow Light · Ultramarine Blue · Viridian
Blacks: Ivory Black
Medium: A pre-mixed string of nine neutral gray values (Ivory Black and Titanium White, sometimes with a little Raw Umber to neutralise the cool bias). Flesh tones were built by mixing specific reds and oranges into the neutral gray of the correct value.
Quantity: Defined by its organisation, not its quantity. The palette was pre-mixed and laid out in orderly strings of value before any painting began.

Source: Reilly's materials, from student accounts (Higgins, Garafola).

Workflow, from blank canvas

1. Pre-mix the organised palette
Mix the nine-value neutral gray scale from black to white, then mix strings of red and yellow-red to match each value step.
Why: This settles absolute value control before the first mark. Colour choices then become deliberate, made against a known value structure.
2. Lay in the drawing
Construct the figure on the canvas with the six-line abstraction for the body and the rhythm lines for the head.
Why: The drawing sets the gesture and structure. It is a construction, not a copy, built from a clear set of principles.
3. Block in the value "poster"
Paint the large flat masses of the light-and-shadow pattern in a strict order: the darkest dark accent, then all the shadows, then all the lights.
Why: This gives the painting a strong, readable design. If the poster works, the painting works. Every later detail is built on that simple statement.
4. Turn the form with halftones
Using the pre-mixed palette, paint the halftones that carry the transition between light and shadow, giving the forms volume.
Why: With the value structure locked in by the palette and the poster, the halftones can be placed accurately to model the form without corrupting the overall light effect.
5. Place the highlights and accents
Add the last touches: the brightest highlights and the reflected light inside the shadows.
Why: These come last, only once the whole structure of drawing, value, and form is securely in place.

Refusals — what they would not do

Refused to mix colour intuitively on the fly, insisting on the pre-mixed, value-controlled palette.
Refused to correct a student's work by painting on it, demonstrating on a separate surface instead.
Refused to let a student paint until he judged they had a sound enough foundation in his drawing method.
Refused to teach by copying the model, teaching a system for constructing the figure from abstract principles instead.

Reference

Primary source: The live model, posed under a single controlled light to make a clear, analysable pattern of light and shadow.
Photography: Yes, and openly, as part of the "picture making" curriculum. He taught students to hire their own models, rent costumes, and use cameras and lighting to build reference for illustration assignments.

Exceptions

His blackboard lecture drawings were abstract diagrams meant to explain a principle, not to represent a specific person.

Lineage

Every teacher and student below sits on the site-wide teacher-student map.

Teachers

George Bridgman · from 1927, at the Art Students League — Anatomy and figure construction. Reilly was Bridgman's class monitor and his direct successor in the League's drawing chair.
Frank Vincent DuMond · at the Art Students League — Painting and colour theory. DuMond's own systematic approach to a pre-mixed palette fed directly into Reilly's larger system.

Influences

The structural drawing of George Bridgman, the systematic palette of Frank Vincent DuMond, and the professional practice of the illustrator Dean Cornwell, for whom he apprenticed.

Students

Jack Faragasso, his successor, who documented and taught the Reilly system for decades.
James Bama, painter of the American West.
Peter Max, the pop artist.
Clark Hulings, painter of street scenes and landscapes.
Charles Reid, the watercolourist.
Michael Aviano, Gerald Allison, Basil Gogos, and Doug Higgins.

In their own words

“Ran up to Frank Reilly to tell him of my revelation and he just smiled saying, 'You weren't ready until now'.”

— Tom Palmer, recalling the moment the system finally clicked, Quoted in "Frank Reilly: A no nonsense guy", Today's Inspiration, 2008, 2008

A student describing how the complex, systematic method fell into place after a lecture, and Reilly's reply that learning is a matter of readiness.

“Son, if I told you everything that is wrong with these drawings you will need a psychiatrist.”

— Frank J. Reilly, to a new student, Candido Rodriguez, quoted in "Another Look at Frank Reilly", Today's Inspiration, 2010, 2010

Reilly's blunt verdict at a first critique, before he broke the student's pencil to the right length and demonstrated the six-line figure from scratch.

“I was trained in art school to use the photograph. Frank Reilly, who was my teacher, gave us an illustration assignment every six weeks. We hired professional models, rented costumes, and took photographs.”

— James Bama, Quoted in James Bama: A Retrospective, 2024, 2024

Confirming that photography was built into Reilly's curriculum for commercial illustrators, not something to be avoided.

Techniques and practices

systematic-art-pedagogy

organized-palette-system

nine-value-gray-scale

reilly-head-abstraction

six-line-figure-construction

value-poster-lay-in

rhythm-lines

Where they trained and taught

The Art Students League

Questions and answers

What is the Frank Reilly method?

A complete system for drawing and painting that Reilly taught at the Art Students League. It constructs the figure with abstract rhythm lines and paints with an "organised palette," a pre-mixed nine-value scale that gives precise control over colour and value.

What is the Reilly organised palette?

A palette setup where the artist pre-mixes a string of nine neutral gray paints, black to white. Every other colour, flesh tones above all, is then mixed to match the value of one of the grays. The value of every colour is fixed in advance, not judged by eye in the heat of painting.

What is the Reilly head drawing method?

Known as the Reilly abstraction, it constructs the head from proportional divisions and abstract rhythm lines that connect the key features. It stresses understanding the flow of the forms over simply copying what you see.

Did Frank Reilly write a book?

No. He prepared manuscripts for four books, but none were published. His complete system is documented in books by his students, most notably Mastering Drawing the Human Figure by his successor Jack Faragasso.

How was Reilly's method different from his teacher, George Bridgman?

Bridgman built the figure from blocky, wedged masses to understand anatomy in action. Reilly built on that foundation and added a full system for painting, including the organised palette and a step-by-step process for controlling value and colour.

Who were Frank Reilly's most famous students?

Reilly taught thousands, many of whom became successful commercial and fine artists. Among the best known are the painter James Bama, the pop artist Peter Max, the watercolourist Charles Reid, and Jack Faragasso, who became his successor.

If this painter is your match

You believe art is a science that can be learned. You want a complete, logical system that removes the guesswork. You are willing to do the methodical work of pre-mixing a nine-value palette to gain absolute control over your painting's structure.

Borrow this: Before you paint, pre-mix a nine-value gray scale. Draw the figure with the six-line abstraction. Block in a flat two-value "poster" of light and shadow. Only then, using your value-controlled palette, add the halftones to model the form.

Adjacent painters

Andrew Loomis1892–1959

The American illustrator-teacher who built heads from a ball and plane, unified pictures under one light with his form principle, and wrote the six drawing books painters still start with.

Louise Bourgeois1911–2010

A French-American sculptor who returned compulsively to drawing and painting through six decades of nightly insomnia, treated the daily mark as self-administered psychoanalysis, and built a private cosmology of red, spirals, spiders, and houses.

George Bridgman1864–1943

The Art Students League drawing teacher who built the figure from blocky masses set in perspective, fixed the structure and the movement before any surface detail, and trained a generation of American illustrators.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder1525–1569

A Flemish master who sketched the Alps on horseback in 1552 and for the rest of his life composed his panel paintings in the studio from a library of those drawings, a set of peasant-wedding field notes, and a habit of "moralizing" every scene through absurdist humor.

Primary sources

Jack Faragasso, Mastering Drawing the Human Figure from Life, Memory, Imagination. The definitive book on Reilly's drawing method, written by his student and successor at the Art Students League. First published in the 1980s.
Doug Higgins, The Frank Reilly School of Art. A self-published firsthand account by a former student and class monitor, with invaluable detail on the studio practice and class structure.
Ralph Garafola, Frank J. Reilly: The Elements of Painting. A book by a student aiming to preserve Reilly's word-for-word lectures on painting and colour theory.
Frank J. Reilly, handwritten lecture notes. Reilly's own extensive teaching notes (over a thousand pages). Never published by him, they were used by his successors and are being documented online by the artist John Ennis.
Today's Inspiration blog, "Frank Reilly: A no nonsense guy" (2008) and "Another Look at Frank Reilly" (2010). Key sources for direct quotes and anecdotes from former students like Tom Palmer and Candido Rodriguez.

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