What are the TAD pods like?

[JesseM]

I'm considering a couple options for my future right now, and attending TAD next year is one of them.. but there's one thing I can't really find any information on, and that's the pods. I understand TAD classes like "figure drawing" will supply high-res images to work from, but that can't compare to working from life. Do the pods frequently have live models to draw from? What about cast work and the like? Are the pods really more like a shared studio (ie community easels, people to exchange crits with, etc), or do the local directors/teachers supply more information, classes (that is, extra weekly figure drawing from life or something), bonus assignments, etc?

I guess I'm just torn between attending an atelier for a bit and jumping straight to TAD. I don't have an art college education (actually, I'm just getting out of high school next year), so I feel like I should really be in a classroom working from life for a while, but I don't want to dilute my education and waste my time anymore when I could jump straight into the real learning road.. which, as best I can tell, would be TAD.

Sorry for my verbose tendencies and thanks in advance for all information!

[gntlemanartist]

I can give you a little bit of personal perspective from the Richmond POD.

I just started this Fall in the TAD Full-time program and I spend almost all my time in the POD. When they say full-time they are NOT kidding. I get to the POD roughly 9AM and I usually don't leave until 10-11PM. The time I spend here is a combination of the online classes and doing assignments for those classes.

It sounds like human figure drawing is a big interest of yours. There are live figure drawing sessions once a week. There's also an observational figure drawing class which is excellent and an anatomy class that helps a lot in visualizing the human form when you don't have a figure in front of you. The teachers for these courses are top notch and this is not my first art school experience, TAD is career-change re-training for me. I've been extremely impressed with the expertise of the instructors.

The RVA POD is smaller than the ones in Austin and Kansas City and ours is pretty quiet. There are a few TAD students who are here all the time (like myself) but the majority are Career Mentorship students who just come in to work on their own schedule.

The thing I love about the POD is that I have my own workspace in an open studio environment, everything is set up the way I want it and I don't have to worry about causing a mess at home. You can have as much or as little interaction with the other students as you want and seeing what other people are working on really pushes you to better your skills. I'd strongly encourage you to consider doing it, but be aware that the workload is like being in a masters degree program.