The Early Photographs of Bettie Page: An American Icon
Jack Faragasso is a native born New Yorker who has been teaching drawing, painting, and composition at the Art Students League of New York since 1968. It was only natural that Mr. Faragasso, after being discharged from the US Army,  to enroll in an art school.  At the Art Students League of New York, he studied with Frank Reilly, both in New York and Woodstock and learned how to paint landscape and the figure outdoors.  Reilly also taught photography as it was necessary for executing illustrations for portraits.  Reilly was and still is regarded by many as one of the finest teachers of drawing and painting in the country. Faragasso, continues as the foremost authority on the Reilly system of drawing and painting. After his studies with Reilly, Mr. Faragasso embarked on a career of free lancing every type of art work, especially paperback book covers which were a good outlet for realistic representational painting then.   In 1967, Mr. Faragasso assumed directorship and instructor of Reilly’s School and then in 1968, he brought the students back to the league where he is still teaching and carrying on Reilly’s work.  Regarding drawing, Mr. Faragasso’s class covers a thorough knowledge of light and shade, as well as structure, planes and forms, and how light reveals them.These subjects are drawn with the principles of “growth” and “action,” using a varied line to make the drawing more dimensional and expressive.  As for the painting of the portrait and the figure, students are taught how to make an imprimatura, an underpainting used from the days of the Renaissance.  Classes also cover color and the palette; the mixing of complexion tones for any complexion in any lighting condition, be it indoors or outdoors; the lay-in and massing of tones; edges and brushwork; drapery; and many other subjects concerning painting in oils.