Digital Studio | Evening | 6 Session Pass

The Royal Drawing School believes that drawing is for everyone.

Connect with our tutors and world-renowned drawing tuition wherever you are through our Digital Studio. Experience our varied range of exciting drawing sessions via live-streaming technology for an in-studio feel online. Broadcast live from the RDS studios, these digital sessions allow our tutors to utilise the life room in new, creative ways to develop unique drawing tuition with engaging perspectives, dynamic lighting setups and on-screen support only possible online.

With no need to commit to a whole day or a series of weeks you can drop-in to our tutor-guided one-hour lunchtime and two-hour evening drawing classes to support your art practice or studies, try out the RDS drawing experience, unwind, and expand your vocabulary of drawing skills and ideas using our specialist digital technology.

Our two-hour evening drawing sessions, broadcast live from the RDS studios, are an opportunity for students to experience the dynamic and dramatic possibilities of the life room from home. Using a range of drawing practices, our expert tutors will guide you through a series of exercises over the course of each session. All levels welcome.

This session pass will give you access to all of the remaining Evening Life Drawing sessions in the Spring Term all at a 25% discount. Outlines of the sessions are below.

Please note: The Royal Drawing School online models will not pose nude. Models in this series will be semi clothed.

Monday 24 February, 18.30 - 20.30 - Great Poses from Art

In this two-hour life drawing session led by Fraser Scarfe, we will take inspiration from some of the greatest drawings ever made, working with our studio model to recreate the poses and explore the techniques that each artist used.

After some initial warm up exercises, we will focus on four key drawings; offering context to the artists who drew them and presenting new challenges to draw from. You will explore different ways of using tone, material, line, and composition. During the session we will encounter the urgency of Rembrandts quick drawings, the quiet glowing light and tone of a Seurat, the inky fluidity of Marleen Dumas, or the exquisite line work of a Degas.

Each pose will use specialist equipment and technology to further enhance and recreate the feel and effect of the drawing studied. All levels welcome.

Monday 3 March, 18.30 - 20.30 - Plant Time: Slow Drawing

This session led by Lindsay Sekulowicz, we will offer an opportunity to engage closely with nature. Looking through the lenses of artists, scientists, architects and other thinkers, you might be drawing from the ephemeral world of flowers, paying attention to the colour of mosses and pressed plants, or reflecting on the deep layers of time in fossils and minerals. You will learn how slow looking can influence your work and discover how objects in nature can be sources of inspiration. This session is designed so students can engage with whatever materials you have to hand; pencil, watercolour, charcoal. All levels welcome.

Monday 10 March, 18.30 - 20.30 - Printmaking at home

In this session, we will work with the life model while discovering the versatile technique of monotype printmaking.

Tutor Jake Garfield will lead students through the process, moving between drawing and printmaking, encouraging improvisation and experimentation with character, atmosphere, tone, and color. Practical demonstrations will show how you can adapt and improvise printmaking techniques at home.

All you will need is a few oil pastels to engage with this creative session.

Monday 17 March, 18.30 - 20.30 - Life Drawing in Colour

In this session led by David Gardner, we will explore the interplay of artificial lighting, using its glow to bring new dimensions to our work.

From Caravaggio's dramatic chiaroscuro lighting to Lucas Samaras' colourful staging for his Polaroid series, as well as Euan Uglow's nighttime paintings - we will look at how artists have used new and exciting ways to illuminate and rethink the human form.

We shall cast the figure under contrasting spotlights of colour, where reds will meet blues and pinks will meet greens. Let's experiment and see what happens at the intersection of such opposing colours. Let's see what kind of transformative qualities these spotlights of colour will have on the human form.

We will work in collaboration with a dynamic model and differing camera angles to stimulate our visual responses. All levels welcome.

Monday 24 March, 18.30 - 20.30 - Ink and collage

In this life drawing session students will learn how to create a painterly composition of the figure.

Tutor Elizabeth McCarten will introduce expressive approaches to using ink and watercolour, exploring a range of mark-making to create unique, primed paper. These primed papers will be used to build dynamic figure collages, exploring composition and colour in new, creative ways. We will push beyond drawing from observation, into a more imaginative realm exploring the tension that lies between figurative and abstract work. All levels welcome.

Monday 31 March, 18.30 - 20.30 - Capturing Light

Tutor Katy Papineau will guide you through drawing a figure posed in different kinds of light. We will use film as our inspiration for lighting the model, recreating film shots that exemplify an atmospheric use of light. You will use colour materials on coloured paper to capture the atmosphere of different types of light: the haziness of sunrise, the coolness of moonlight, the intensity of artificial light. All levels welcome.

Further details

• The Royal Drawing School does not use nude models online. Models in this series will be semi clothed
• All students will need a device that supports the latest version of Zoom
• Chat support available during the session
• These sessions are designed so that students can engage with whatever materials they have to hand. Each session has a suggested material list that will allow you to get the most out of the classes.

Share your work on social media with the hashtag #RDSLivestreamStudio