Have you ever wondered how to maintain the freshness of your sketchbooks while making a painting? It’s not enough simply to copy. Instead, the sketchbook itself has to become the subject, a fresh source of inspiration, to be walked through like a landscape, to surprise and inform you, to pick and choose what you want from it. This course is suitable for those with some drawing and painting experience and a basic understanding of their materials, or those willing to experiment from the outset.
During this course, you will be working in the house and grounds of West Dean College. You will spend two days working directly into sketchbooks, followed by three days painting in oils or acrylics (acrylics are best for a mixed media approach, but please bring whichever paints you feel most comfortable with).
During the course, you can expect to fill a concertina sketchbook, and begin two or three paintings, working towards completion of some or all of them, if this feels appropriate. Or, with discussion, taking work away to complete at home.
You will be encouraged to experiment and take risks throughout, both in your sketchbooks and in your paintings. The aim is to bridge the gap between the freedom often felt in sketchbooks, being unprecious and immediate, and the constraints sometimes felt in the process of painting. By repeating exercises in the painting process, already executed in the sketchbooks, you will practise taking risks with your work, accepting accidents and surprises as a way of moving forwards, rather than following a predictable path.
Taking your sketchbook with you, gathering different viewpoints from around the location, layering, mark-making, using mixed media, throughout the pages of the concertina book, you can transfer these different viewpoints from your sketchbook into your paintings, layering, changing as you go. You will work on three or more related paintings simultaneously, for the last three days of the course, treating them more like pages of a sketchbook than as finished paintings.
As with the tutor’s own practice, daily meditation and breathing exercises will be introduced. Connecting the breath and body to the art of painting will help loosen up, focusing on the process, rather than the product, and being surprised by what emerges.
On the first evening, you will start with a practical exercise in a miniature sketchbook to introduce the course. You need only bring a pencil and pen for this preliminary exercise.
When: course starts on Sunday evening 6pm for dinner and evening session, and ends on Friday 30th August at 3pm. Working days in between ate 9.15am - 5pm
Where: West Dean College, near Chichester
Cost: £715 (not including accommodation)
Booking: via West Dean College website