Drawing with Charcoal: Land & Sea

SUNDAY 15th NOVEMBER 10am to 4pm What to expect: This one-day workshop covers the fundamentals of using charcoal as a drawing medium, with the specific focus on creating engaging landscapes or seascapes. Through a series of exercises, you'll become familiar with the materials and tools associated with charcoal, leading up to developing your own complex, multilayered drawing of a seascape or landscape. You will be encouraged to create charcoal drawings that balance expressive energy with refined detail, enhancing both your confidence and skill. The day will help demystify and rediscover charcoal, helping you to get the most from this incredibly diverse medium. You will be encouraged to bring your own reference material of a sea or landscape that inspires you, in the form of sketches and photographs. Full details will be given ahead of time by your tutor. Morning: • Overview of different forms of charcoal: willow, compressed, charcoal pencils and the tools to erase, blur, reduce and soften, using putty rubbers, brushes and blenders. • Experimenting with mark-making through addition and subtraction, combining methods to create texture, depth and richness. • A chance to look at established artists who use charcoal in their practise. Afternoon: • Practicing drawing skills, examining light, shadow, midtones, texture and composition. • Exploring, refining and blending techniques, creating layers and areas of complexity. Keeping areas of the paper clean and using tools for precision. • Embarking on a sustained multi-layered landscape drawing, developing levels of interest and complexity. What you will take away • A series of small quick mark making exercises in your own sketchbook (provided), that you can use as reference for future drawings. • A series of developmental sketches fusing mark making and landscape study. • A larger, more complex and considered landscape study in charcoal. This workshop is suitable for those completely new to charcoal, as well as more experienced artists. Your tutor: Garry Parsons is a very successful artist and illustrator, with an illustration career spanning over two decades, working with some of the UK's most respected children's book authors. His fine art practice focuses on the natural world, with charcoal as his medium of choice. Refreshments are provided, and you are welcome to use our small kitchen. There is a shop a short walk away, and free parking just outside. We're on the first floor.