ABOUT THIS COURSE

We all want to improve our drawing. But what does it actually mean to get better at drawing? Answering this question is essential to progressing with our drawing skills. This drawing fundamentals course is specifically designed to identify what we need to work on and exactly how to make lasting improvements in your fundamental drawing skills. 

Over these 15 hours you will have this incredible opportunity to learn from a master. Working from a life model model working on a single pose for the duration of the workshop so that you leave with a finished piece. We will work to identify what is important and what isn't in drawing the figure focussing on making specific and identifiable improvements in your drawing.

We will be using the sight-size method with the live model over the course. This method is a simple and proven way to see and draw more skilfully. The approach to looking at the model, using materials, making marks, etc. is all based on the premise of simplifying. "When in doubt, simplify" as Steve Huston says. How can we best simplify our way of looking? Our subject? Our technique?

Students are welcome to work in charcoal or oil paints.

Suitable for any level.

Materials needed

• Faber-Castell putty rubber

• A2 cartridge paper (will be supplied in class)

• Willow charcoal

• A piece of medium grain sandpaper

• A craft knife/ snap-off blade

• Masking tape

Option to use oil paints, see below.

THE BASIC MATERIALS LIST IS:

• a canvas primed with jesso - even pre-primed canvases will need another application or two of jesso (suggested size no smaller than 60x40cm)

• Brushes

• Palette

• Palette knife

• Black/ raw umber /red /ochre /white oils

• Sansodor

• A preferred medium.

THE DETAILED MATERIALS LIST IS:

• brown baking paper (for storing oil paint)

• Vanish soap (for cleaning brushes)

• Sansodor (odourless solvent)

• Preferred medium (I would use linseed oil)

• Medium cup

• Wooden palette

• Palette knife

• Canvas

OIL-PAINTS.

Michael Harding/ Old Holland recommended

1. Raw Umber

2. Ultramarine Blue

3. Titanium White

4. Yellow ochre or Old Holland Yellow Ochre Light

5. Cadmium red

6. Transparent Red Oxide

7. Alizarin Crimson

8. Ivory black

BRUSHES:

A range of about 10+ flat and filbert brushes in different sizes. From Evans art shop I suggest:

• Winton Flats 1 to 4

• Winton Filberts 1 to 8

• Winton Short Flat Brights 2 to 8
• Richard Oliver Flat Hogs 0 to 4

• Richard Oliver Hog Filberts 1 to 6 Also the Mr. Price Royal & Langnickel brushes are fine.

Get 2 packets of those and you’re away in a hack. (Pictured)
Plumb line (a 60-70cm piece of thin string or thread with a small fishing weight attached to one end but I will bring these)

• hand mirror

• black mirror (a piece of Lacobel black glass available from the glazier)

Meet nicholas

Florence Academy of Art prize winner and graduate.

Nicholas finished his post-graduate studies at Ireland’s National College of Art & Design (NCAD) in 2009, having previously graduated from the Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork. Thoroughly disillusioned by art education in Ireland, Nicholas searched elsewhere and was introduced to the American ateliers in Florence, in which students study exclusively from life, by the Irish painter Gearoid Hayes.

Subsequently Nicholas quit his teaching career and attended the Florence Academy of Art, Sweden under the tutelage of the Swedish painter Joakim Ericsson. Nicholas received a pair of drawing awards during his time at the school in Sweden and returned to Ireland in 2013. He is now exhibiting nationally, and works and teaches out of in his studio in Wicklow.

nicholasbenedictrobinson.com