Workshops and Projects
Life Drawing 1. Short Course
Drawing the human form from life with inspirations from the old masters
This Life Drawing course aims to explore both the masculine and feminine forms, using a variety of poses inspired by historical and contemporary artworks.
Whether a beginner or experienced in the skills of life drawing, you will be given the opportunity to be stimulated by different artists’ approaches, whilst practising your own skills of observation, proportion, mark-making and use of line and tone. Underpinning the drawing experience, you will be developing an appreciation of positive and negative space, weight, balance and composition.
Each week will focus on an element in art history, taking you through a range of techniques and exercises to enable the creation of exciting, lively drawings. You will be guided by a passionate, enthusiastic tutor who will encourage and support you throughout. Be enthused by traditional artists such as Poussin, Botticelli and Rodin and more contemporary inspirations from Marlene Dumas and Egon Scheile to add an enriching layer to your knowledge and individual styles of life drawing.
The two-hour class will start promptly and begin with a brief introduction to set the scene. Students can enjoy an exciting and friendly atmosphere to encourage their best potential and creativity.
- A1 white cartridge paper
- Charcoal
- Pencil 2B, 4B, 6B (craft knife and sand paper to shape)
- Knead able eraser
- White classic eraser
- White pastel
- Ink and soft brush (disposable cups for mixing tones)
- Sanguine effects – sepia pastel and sepia/ red pencil
- Masking tape
Life Drawing 2: Exploring the Drawing Surface
This short course will explore the potential of combining life drawing from the nude form and working into a variety drawing surfaces. Each week, explore a new drawing surface ranging from gessoed canvas, rabbit-sized Fabiano paper, heavy duty tracing paper, brown parcel paper and Pink Financial Times news sheet. Each surface will handle the medium differently and present new challenges. At all times, we will endeavour to enhance drawing skills through gesture, addition and subtraction mark making, tone and proportion, using a variety of media. Individual styles will be sensitively nurtured whether you are a beginner or more experienced. We will explore artists who work with such materials to inform and enhance students own approaches, style and techniques. Poses will be taken from classical art history masterpieces.
Life Drawing as inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th century mural of ‘The Last Supper’
Leonardo Da Vinci’s fresco “The Last Supper” is used as a source of inspiration for life drawing through use of body language in a variety of poses. Create your own interpretation of the last supper in a final drawing composed of studies made from your sessions. Participants will draw from life the human figure, exploring proportion, and mark making each week and understand Da Vinci’s masterpiece which conveyed the moment that Christ revealed he was to be betrayed by one of those present.
Images from Life Drawing Workshops
Click an image to view it at full size.
Seeing Small: Microscope and Art Project
Nature forms the backdrop to our society and generally goes unnoticed however take a dandelion specimen and place under a simple microscope …. see the vivid yellow pollen grains arranged along the stamens …. see the feathery formations of the seed flight. Now draw what you see with the freshness and spontaneity of line and colour to create an artistic creation possessing its own aesthetic and integrity. The dandelion takes on new dimensions as perception is enhanced. Periods of sustained looking under the microscope and responding through the act of drawing perpetuates new acquaintances with the specimen never to be forgotten. At this juncture art and science and nature form an exciting union.
This project is supported by an Open Access Award from Creative Black Country as part of the Creative
People and Places Scheme.
Pollen Art Drawing Project
Seeing Smaller is a future workshop where pollen grains are viewed at much higher magnifications of typically 10000 X, or even 100,000 X. This viewing requires a specialized scanning electron microscope and the artist has access through a collaboration with a science department from the local university. The resulting imagery allows for artistic responses that resonate amazing abstractions linking the ‘unseen’ in nature with science and drawing.
Contact me for more information about workshops, commissions or possible collaborations
