One Week Holiday Course | Birds and Beasts: Drawing Living Forms
Explore animals in art across cultures and eras — drawing from life, myth, and imagination to inspire playful, expressive approaches to texture, movement, and mark-making.
The earliest-known example of figurative drawing was recently discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. It depicts a wild pig and three human-like figures; the interaction of man and beast over 51,000 years ago. In this online course we travel from the Ice Age to the present day, considering how humans have visualised and recorded animals in different cultural contexts to ignite ideas, connections and inspiration for our own work.
Over the week, we journey through air, land, water and into our imaginations to seek out the subjects which most captivate us and test out fresh approaches; from our tools and materials to the soundscapes we work in. Animals invite us to be playful with our process and the possibilities of drawing as we explore texture, movement, essence and abstraction; be it mark-making to birdsong or painting with feathers. There will be opportunities to draw both from observation and imagination with a range of media and reference material, working from paintings, sculpture, film, anatomical diagrams and life.
Who is it for
Beginners welcome. No experience of drawing required.
What’s provided
Prior to the start of each online courses, you will receive our Padlet Noticeboard which houses course details, material lists, and references. It also contains a Padlet Gallery where you'll be able to upload and comment on work created during the course.
What to bring
For online courses, you must provide your own materials.
Tutors may suggest recommended materials on the Padlet noticeboard. Additionally, you may need:
Drawing pencils
Conté crayons
Pastels
Ink pens
Coloured pencils
Putty and hard erasers
Pencil sharpener
Sketchbook
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.
