Life Drawing

Life drawing is one of the most fascinating things to do in art and design. It is a superb way of starting your drawing journey if you have never been there before, and it is a never-ending theme for more advanced artists at all levels.

In everyday life, we are tuned into observing and interpreting the bodies and movements of our fellow humans. This makes us experts in knowing about the theme of this course!  As we 'own' and use our own physical bodies, we bring a lot of observational and embodied experience to drawing the model.  As the nude comes without visual distractions on its surface like buttonholes, textile patterns, shoelaces, and shape-changing garment silhouettes, drawing is all about observing the shape and how it transforms in its various poses. A beautifully simple and elegant concept.

One day classes are listed under our EVENTS section, select Art.

Mega Life Drawing days:

Content for Monday's course at the Guild - Life Drawing

We will try out the many different ways of using drawing (working with line) as an expressive tool to document our individual observations. We will work with pencils, ink, charcoal, and combine line work with some colour.

We will do quite a bit of sketching: Drawing simplified shapes for what we observe, correcting our drawing's previous steps and adding further detail as we go along. We will also explore to work with line as a continuous, organic flow of movement as a way of documenting our vision's observational journey along the shapes of the model.

Sabine supports every learner individually as their work develops and she encourages a friendly and relaxed group atmosphere in the sessions where learners share their experiences about what works for them, what they enjoy about it and where they find something difficult.

Learners should bring one or two B4 or softer pencils and a sharpener for the first session. All further materials will be discussed in class before needed in the next.

Inexpensive A2 size cartridge paper can be purchased on the night, but learners are also welcome to bring their own materials and papers. The course includes model costs and models change on a weekly basis.

The course is suited for beginners and experts alike.

Content for Thursdays course at Dean Row Community Centre - Life Drawing with painting

No Class Thursday 4 May 2023

In this course, we will not only work with drawings, meaning to use line as our main form of expression, but we will also use colour techniques. We will alternate one session of drawing with one session of painting.

When drawing, we will work on sketching, continuous line drawing and exploring line-based representational techniques like hatching. Such drawing is also aimed at working towards our painting sessions. In the following painting session we will work with acrylic paints or, if the learners wish, with oil paints. The model's poses will change less frequently and last longer. We will explore how to paint the whole canvas, figure and background, by building the image gradually, using a range of ways how to layer colours and create textured paint surfaces. Depending on the learners' interests, this could even lead us a little away from precise representation of the figure but instead work more freely with paints, surface and the observed scene and let the image become a bit more abstract.

Sabine supports every learner individually as their work develops and she encourages a friendly and relaxed group atmosphere in the sessions where learners share their experiences about what works for them, what they enjoy about it and where they find something difficult.

Learners should bring one or two B4 or softer pencils and a sharpener for the first session. A2 size cartridge paper can be purchased on the night, but learners are also welcome to bring their own materials and papers. Work in the painting sessions will require acrylic paints, brushes, a water container and canvas or acrylic painting paper. What to bring exactly will be discussed in the first session.

Sabine Kussmaul is a visual artist and fashion designer who has many years of experience in teaching drawing. She holds a PGCE(FE) and a Masters Degree in Fine Art and is now researching drawing and installation at the University of Chester.