To expand my research into drawing, I’m undertaking a year-long period of skills development. I attended the Royal Drawing School’s Online Drawing Development Year in 2023, accessing process-specific learning from skilled artists, whilst still being able to work in the Shetland landscape.
The aim of this time of intensive study and observation is to expand creative processes, leading to new ways of working with environment and drawing.
Spring Term
In spring term classes led to exploration of practical techniques and expanded media, through an exciting and broad range of creative approaches to drawing. Classes:
Transforming Observation: Memory and Imagination
Drawing the Figure
Mapping: Drawing Internal Landscapes
Global Museums of the Past and Future
Drawing Space: Interior and Exterior
Animals in Art
Colour and Memory
Summer Term
Classes:
Where Drawing Meets Words
Abstraction Qualities in the Landscape, Gardens and Natural Forms
Observation and Imagination
Drawing Topographies: Internal and External
Drawing Flux and Flow: Watercolour and Ink
Contemporary Portrait
Summer’s classes explored further aspects of environment including topographies, viewpoint, chance and change. Aspects from the first term of imagination, memory, and developing visual vocabulary were built upon, enriched by new approaches like narrative. Further study of the figure continued to develop observational skills and technique.
Autumn Term
Classes:
Drawing a Head
Reimagining Ancient Myths, Lost and Future Worlds
World Imagery: Drawing from Art, Drawing from Life
Drawing Topographies: Internal and External
Colour and Light: The Contemporary Portrait
Sculpture and Form
The third and final term’s classes further honed observational skills with closer looking at the head, and colour and light, as well as imaginative techniques relating to environment and nature. The Topographies class was an extended 10 week course, leading to further exploration of dynamic pictorial space, narrative and place in drawing. The Sculpture class extended ideas of using drawing as a tool for composition in three-dimensions and close looking.
In-Person Days
In January 2024, the Online Drawing Development Year 2023 cohort were invited to two in-person drawing days at the Royal Drawing School.
It was a chance to finally meet up with everyone after our year of online classes, and to draw together at the school's beautiful Shoreditch studios.
We started the first day by wrapping up and heading out to Arnold Circus with concertina sketchbooks. The idea was to draw quite intuitively, using the format to play with space - looking up and down, near and far. So the drawing became not necessarily a depiction of the place, but more a series of moments stitched together. In the afternoon, we used our concertinas in collaborative drawings. It was lovely to respond to the marks of others, and especially as you really felt that you'd got to know each other's work so well through the course. On the second of our in-person days at RDS Shoreditch earlier this month, we explored portraits. The day started with some quick drawings of each other. We then spent the main part of the day working in pairs on collaborative double portraits, and it was really interesting to take it in turns to draw and to be drawn and learning from the other artist’s way of working.
Exhibition
DRAWING BEYOND by DRAWING STUDIO 23
An exhibition of works created by the Royal Drawing School’s Online Drawing Development Year 2023
BREAKER’S GALLERY, RDS NOTTING DALE CAMPUS
North Kensington, 1 Nicholas Rd, Breakers Place, London, W11 4AN
6th - 10th of March 2024
Poster Credits
— Poster Image: Heidrun van Dörfjes
— Poster Design: Becky Moriarty
See more images from the exhibition in journal entries here and here.
Drawing Research and Development Year is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.