One Week Holiday Course | Inspired by Old Masters

Do Old Master paintings sometimes seem hard to relate to for yourself or your practice? This course looks at how we can draw from them using their work as influence for creating something uniquely your own.

Drawing from Art
Drawing from Imagination

One Week Holiday Course | Inspired by Old Masters Image

Course details

Dates

7 Dec – 11 Dec 2026

Times

10:00 – 17:00

Duration

5 sessions

Fees

£445.00

Location

Online

Tutors

Olivia Kemp

Overview

We can all be taken aback by the incredible scale and skill of the great masters. From Rubens to Rembrandt, Gentileschi to Goya, they all have qualities we admire and want to learn from. Yet how can we approach these works with a view to creating for ourselves something that goes further than an academic copy? While copying the work directly gives us incredible insight into its creation, how do you use the work to make something decisively your own invention? You can take from these paintings all the elements you need for your own outcome, without the fear of imitation.

Over the course of these sessions, students will combine observation of their surroundings with photos, objects, memory, a life model and references to masterworks to create something with personal meaning. Students will be encouraged to research and collect imagery as they go to put together a composition on the page that starts to collate everything they have chosen as reference.

Who is it for

Artists, creatives and image-makers of all levels welcome, including beginners.

What’s provided

For our online courses, you will receive prior to the start of the course access to our Padlet Noticeboard where you will be given course details, material lists and some references, as well as our Padlet Gallery where you will be able to upload and comment on work created during the course.

What to bring

For our online courses, you must provide your own materials. Feel free to use any that you would like to during classes, however other suggestions may be posted on the Padlet noticeboard throughout the course by tutors. This is a suggested list of what may be needed:

-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.

We offer a comprehensive concessions scheme on our term-time courses.

Image: 'Study After A Lady With a Fan' by Louise Reynolds

Tutors

Olivia Kemp

Drawing Year Alumna, 2014