One Week Holiday Course | The Etching Week

In this intensive one-week course students will study the main intaglio methods of etching, aquatint, sugar lift and dry point.

Printmaking and Etching

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One Week Holiday Course | The Etching Week Image

Course details

Dates

20 April – 24 April 2026

Times

10:00 – 17:00

Duration

5 sessions

Fees

£445.00

Location

Shoreditch studios

Michael Bartlett I Come to Museums to Take Selfies

Overview

Working on metal is inspiring and its technical complexity stimulates our imagination with greater flexibility. The process broadens the expressive scope of the drawing language and in the dialog between a quick sketch and the etched metal plate, we can rediscover the subject with renewed depth. We will explore the dynamic sensitivities of the intaglio marks; from fine, accurate and subtle, to an extremely intense and irregular, and we will encourage their distinct characteristics to increase the visual impact of the composition. Students will also experiment with colours and layers, combining etching with monoprint, surface roll-ups, and chine colle, to create more spontaneous, painterly interpretations. Etching has influenced many artists towards stronger realisation of their ideas, and we will be looking at range of references to understand how they approached, and resolved various pictorial challenges such as contrast, space and rhythm.

Who is it for

Beginners welcome. No experience of etching required.

What’s provided

For printmaking courses, a fully equipped intaglio print room is provided for students to work with etching, collograph and monoprint.

Plates and paper can be bought at just over the cost-price in the print room (card payments only). On average, most students usually spend between £10 - £20 for a 10 week course.

What to bring

You will need to wear apron and old clothes and bring ideas and source material with you.

Required materials include:

Basic drawing materials

Eraser
Nylon sable-type brush, between sizes 2 -6

Optional materials include:

Dry point needle or etching needle
Burnisher
Magnifying glass
Scraper

If you own etching tools please mark them with tape or coloured paint and bring them along.

Further material lists are provided a week before your course begins.

Concessions

Unfortunately, we do not offer concessions on our holiday courses.

All of our course rates are subsidised and we also offer a comprehensive concessions scheme on our term-time courses.