September 21, 2022

I’m in the middle of a ten week (one evening a week) online course with the Royal Drawing School in London called Drawing:Ink and Watercolour. Our tutors are the artists Max Naylor and Stephanie Forrest. Stephanie has a series of short experiments for us. Max sets us longer exercises, with a more definite subject matter. It’s a really nice combination as both approaches are pushing me out of old habits and rigid structures of drawing and thinking that I hadn’t realised I was locked into in the first place. Both tutors are very knowledgeable and incorporate some art history into every class which I really appreciate. We upload our work as we go along and get feedback from the tutor all together, and get to see how our classmates interpreted the brief. Each class is an absolute treat!

Week 1 – Max Naylor

It’s so nice to start with a whole ten weeks ahead of us. Because the course is so long there’s lots of playtime built in. This first class was dedicated to getting used to experimenting with the medium. At the start of the class, we looked at examples of watercolour and ink drawings from artists such as Edward Burra, Eric Ravilious, Charles Rene Mackintosh, John Constable, Mama Anderson, Turner and Emil Nolde.

For our drawing exercises, we looked at the natural elements – earth, sky, fire and water.

Exercise 1 – Earth – Landscape:

Invent a landscape  of fields, filling each section with a different technique of mark making, using a limited colour palette. I met a wet wash to start, used a kebab stick for the scratchy marks, wet drops on a wet page and lots of scribbles.

Exercise 2 – Skyscape:

Draw an skyscape, incorporate diverse techniques. Mine was mainly wet and scratchy!

Exercise 3 – Fire:

This started as a volcano but wanted to become a bonfire instead.

Exercise 4 – Water- seascape:

Purply grey clouds and big strong waves.