Thanks Alex -
The Open Sessions are very unstructured and left pretty much up to the Instructor of the Week. I think that they allow 12 -14 students in most of the sessions, and artists pay $40 for the day. There is one live model and one still life set-up, and people just choose which they want to work on - or both if they'd like.
Some of the instructors are portrait or figure painters, and some are still life painters - so usually someone who is interested in still life would select an open sessiion where the instructor of the week could be more helpful to them. I think that sometimes the instructor just uses the time to do his or own open session, and is available if students have questions. In my case I turned it into a mini-class, and as I seem to be able to talk and paint at the same time ( that might not be a good thing
)I just keep a running dialog gong all day.
Students don't have to pay attention to anything they don't want to- so they can just work on their own thing, too.
I really love these sessions and plan to sign up as a student as often as possible. It's a luxury to have a live model for 6 hours, with a limited number of painters. Very often the School's regular Open Studios are packed.
Linda Brandon did one of these so Linda, if you see this you might jump in, or post seprately.