This article describes an arts-based research project in studio drawing education. It applies theories of situated practice learning to a staged drawing event in an ‘ex-academic’ life drawing studio to query a potent site of intersubjective learning and analyse three binary structures that hamper the transformative experiences of learners—master/student, solitary/social, acedia/practice. The unorthodox project features the participation of draughtspuppets—puppets who act as both artists and models in the conventional field of studio drawing. Puppets, rebellious and ambiguous, are ideal agents to disturb pedagogical dialectics and illuminate the learning that occurs in unregulated and unsanctioned ex-academic sites. The learning that occurs in these sites has resisted critical attention. This project is predicated on the radical premise of life drawing and its continued transformative potential for learners.