Interested Parties should be:
Beginners with prior knowledge, as well as advanced sketchers who would like to learn new techniques (Due to the location of the sketching venues, participants should feel comfortable walking for a while).
Urban Sketching: How to Make Places and Buildings Talk
Discover exciting urban sketching and learn how to create atmospheric drawings of the places you’ve visited with vivid colours and interesting compositions using a combination of city and nature.
With just a pencil, a fountain pen and a few water colour pans, we’ll learn how to make our sketches “talk”. Through an array of practical exercises and on-site sketching, we’ll not only focus on architecture, but also foliage and skies, as well as incorporating creative elements such as white space and text.
In particular, our course will deal with the following questions:
- How do I choose an interesting perspective to sketch from?
- How do I approach a complicated scene and pick the right subject to focus on?
- How do I design my page layout so that it’s balanced and lively?
- How can I play around with white space, outlines and skies to give my subject a new perspective?
- What are easy ways to integrate trees and foliage into my sketches?
- How can I make my watercolours look vivid and create textures, shadows and depth?
Still Life Techniques
A still life is a drawing or painting that focuses on immobile objects. The subject matter is inanimate and never moves, typically with a focus on household objects, flowers, or fruits.
Still life work contrasts figure drawing, which focuses on a live human model. With a still life, you know the objects won’t ever move and you can practice with objects with different properties, like shiny metal, clear porcelain, or bulbous apples. Fruit bowls are a popular choice, because they’re made up of simple shapes and everyone usually has fruit lying around.
Creating a still life is a starting point for someone to practice fundamental skills. When drawing inanimate objects, you can be sure that they will stay in the same position until you move them, making it an easier task for beginners.
Still life artwork comes in many different styles and mediums. The brush strokes can be loose and wild, or precise and bold. As long as the subject matter remains inanimate, even pen and pencil can create a still life piece.
Drawing Animals: From Anatomy to Rendering
In this course, you’ll learn how to use a combination of basic shapes, geometric angles and negative spaces to confidently draw any animal you like, with the correct proportions, believable shapes and life-like postures.
Animals are a great subject matter for learning the fundamentals of drawing, because they are more forgiving than figure and portrait studies, but demand greater observation than landscapes and still life. This is an ideal course for newcomers and anyone that wants to learn how to draw by observation, rather than tracing or using a grid.
We will go through general animal anatomy. You will learn about the anatomical features common to most animals, which will make it easier for you to learn how to draw any animal. I’ll discuss the different parts of an animal’s body, it’s skeleton and muscles, and how size affects animal anatomy.
Then there is the main body of the course. Here you will learn how to draw individual species in easy, step-by-step tutorials, where you will be guided through steps to drawing animals’ heads and bodies from a variety of views.
We will learn how to fully engage with the sketching process anchoring our personal visualisations and immersing ourselves in the representation of animal qualities and the blending of feelings contained within for which I have been drawn to studying for many years. We can experiment with a structured objective approach that will enable us to move towards a more imaginative subjective and energetic quality. We will consider visual proportional representation and the emerging images we can take home for further inspired exploration”.
Species that you will learn to draw include:
- Horses
- Eagles
- Big cats (like lions, tigers and leopards)
- Small cats (like your friendly house cat)
- Wolves
- and more…
Finally, you will finish the course learning how to render your animal drawings. Here you will learn the basics of drawing light and shadow. You will also learn how to render animals’ eyes, fur and feathers.
Illustrate Your Favourite Book
Discover a whole new world of artistic expression with our Illustration Art Course.
This course is for anyone interested in visualising words in a multitude of forms, from poetry to magazine articles, to children’s stories and a whole lot more.
Throughout this course you will learn how to transform words and concepts to pictures using a methodology which can be applied to any genre of illustration. Through practical, creative assignments, you will illustrate songs, poems and magazine articles, try your hand at graphic design, illustrating a children’s story or draw your own graphic novel and comic strip.
You can study at your own pace, bring your own style and grow your illustration confidence. Some previous art experience is desirable, although the course will begin with a recap on basic skills and techniques.
Throughout the programme, you will extend your drawing skills to develop your personal visual language and identity. We value your imagination and energy, alongside your conceptual thinking and ideas development, and we will support you in honing your creative skills and knowledge of professional practice.
The course is suitable for everyone who wants to improve their abilities to draw and paint their stories, articles or concepts, or those of others. The tutoring will be scaled to your abilities and aspirations. Come and learn how to transform words into pictures for the very first time, bring a project with you which needs a boost, or take those first steps towards a possible career as an illustrator in your chosen field. All abilities, ambitions and mediums welcomed.
By the end of the course you will have a built a diverse illustration portfolio across multiple genres, enjoyed yourself and increased your confidence.
Calligraphy – Learn Beautiful Writing
Do you want to learn calligraphy?
If so, you’re in the right place. Although the word “calligraphy” comes from the Greek for “beautiful writing”, there’s a lot more to learning calligraphy than simply writing pretty letters. It’s about carefully creating each letter according to certain rules and conventions, and then arranging and positioning the letters and words to create a cohesive whole.
Calligraphy and hand-lettering are relatively easy, unfussy, and affordable. And turns out, writing letters is also incredibly relaxing and helpful for anxiety!
So why would you want to learn how to write calligraphy? Well, as a designer, you can impress your clients by using it for everything from book covers to signs and logos. You can also use your elegant calligraphy alphabet to give that special touch to greeting cards, wedding invites, place cards, and much more. By the end, you’ll know how to create calligraphy letters in two different styles and you’ll be able to use your new calligraphy skills to create invites, illustrations, or anything else you want.
The course will also help to develop your creativity and give you a lot of ideas for future personal projects. The course is for both beginners and advanced students and suitable for left and right-handers.
Logo – Sketch Your Ideas
Sketching is an important aspect of creating a graphic design. The graphic designers sketch their initial design ideas on a piece of paper. For them, sketching is the first step they take when they start working on a project. It gives them the complete freedom to explore their imagination and come out with some creative ideas.
Every business, every brand, and every product in the world need a logo. A logo designer can create a huge and lucrative clientele.
One of the biggest design misconceptions is that it is easy to make a logo. To begin with, a logo is much more than just some colors, fancy fonts, and graphics put together. A logo is an essential part of a brand’s visual identity. When sketching, you must be aware of the main branding elements. Your client’s business is different from the others. If it should be successful, it has to be different. So, find out the key elements that can make the brand stand out. Then, make sketches based on those elements.
Creating a logo demands critical thinking, creative input, and methodical planning.
So, how do you make a logo worth remembering?
An effective logo is unique, sensible, visually enticing, and delivers in its intended message. In its basic form, a well-designed logo is a form of brand identity. However, intricate or time-consuming the design process becomes, the end product must always be simple to understand, memorable, enduring, versatile, and appropriate.
This course provides step-by-step instructions on logo design. No logo design experience is required.
Create Your Dreams in Mandala
A mandala is a complex abstract design that is usually circular in form. In fact, “mandala” is a Sanskrit word that means “circle”. Mandalas generally have one identifiable center point, from which emulates an array of symbols, shapes and forms.
Mandalas can contain both geometric and organic forms. They can also contain recognizable images that carry meaning for the person who is creating it.
In essence, mandalas represent the connection between our inner worlds and outer reality. Designing your own mandalas can be both inspirational and therapeutic.
Drawing and coloring a mandala can be a highly enriching personal experience, in which you look inside yourself and find the shapes, colors and patterns to represent anything from your current state of mind, to your most deeply-desired wish for yourself, a loved one, or for humanity.
You can design a mandala to symbolize a state of mind that you would like to achieve. Mandalas are great tools for meditation and increasing self-awareness. Many different cultures around the world use mandalas in their spiritual practices.
The best thing about designing your own mandals, is that you have the freedom to choose whatever shapes and colors that you feel express your sense of self and your view of reality. Your mandala is yours, and you have the freedom to use your creativity to create a mandala drawing that is uniquely you.
Once you know the basic steps of how to draw a mandala, you can then try new designs and new colors each time you draw a new mandala.
