PILOT COURSES - JUNE 2021
In June we ran a series of pilot drawing sessions to test out the new studio set up and get some feedback on some of our new courses. Here are some photos documenting the sessions. Within all the groups there was a wide variety of experience, from practicing artists who are already teaching professionally to adults who have not drawn since childhood. It was encouraging that everyone came up with strong drawing responses to the tasks we set.
MARK MAKING
We started off trialling the first planned session for the Revisiting Basics course by looking at details of other artists' mark making, noticing and imitating the sensitivity, intensity and dynamic of marks by looking at artists from Van Gogh and Bonnard to Eva Hesse and Sesshū. Later in the session we tried to keep the dynamism and variety of marks whilst applying this to a still life containing extremely varied surface textures.
OBSERVATION
Making quick portraits of each other using the unforgiving but immediate sharpie pens on post-it notes was the warm up. We heightened our sensitivity to stylistic marks, and the choices we make when we have limited options by repeating a still life of a nasturtium plant, firstly only using curved marks, then only using angular straight lines. Our reference points were Tintoretto's study in the British Museum which is made up of curves, and Modrian Self Portrait from 1942 which reduces the curves of his face to a series of lines.
TRANSCRIPTION
In this session we looked at the Velazquez painting Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, using charcoal and a putty eraser to analyse the tonal scheme of the painting.
COLLABORATION
Our final pilot session was on collaboration. We began with the surrealist game of Cadavre Exquis, then used Alexander Cozen's C18th Blot Method to project images into nebulous shapes, at each stage passing our paper on to a neighbour for completion. The use of chance, a sense of repsonsiveness and improvisation and the formal elements of blots and lines linked the various tasks.
