9 weeks | newcomer/refresher / all levels | €330 | All materials included.

This course begins with a slide lecture that will give the historical context of the course and introduce the Bargue-Gérôme Cours de Dessin drawing manual. Students will be introduced to the principle “What Happens Here (mind, body, tools) will Affect There (line, drawing)”. Therefore, it is essential that the often overlooked “here” is developed first. This is done through challenging, while often fun drawing exercises or rehearsals that aim at improving the students concentration, focus, patience; as well as their coordination, posture and ability to visualise. The aim is to instil attentiveness with precise observation and articulation. Useful measuring techniques such as the sight-size and comparative, relational approaches will be taught. When applied, students whether advanced or beginner will see their vision and ability dramatically enhanced.

Students will then be introduced to the Cours de Dessin and begin to work from the introductory prints. While referring to the supporting schema’s or guides, they will be taught to reduce the complex form to it’s more essential and manageable elements, while removing the perceptual and mental barriers to clear seeing and thinking. They will begin to appreciate what it means to use minimum means for maximum effect.

Whether a beginner or advanced you will discover that the course’s vital lessons and approach are universally applicable and of immediate benefit to your practice and to your experience of life.

9 weeks | for graduates of course 1 | €295 | All materials included.

These application and practice-led courses are set up as a bridge course between Course 1 and 3, and is also recommended for those who have completed Course 3, so as to fully realise in mind and practice what was learnt previously.

The instructor will be at hand to remind and elaborate on what was taught in previous courses. It is a chance to “get it into their bones.”

Whereas on Courses 1 and 3 students were coming to grips with new information, now they will be left for longer periods on their own, thrown out of the nest, as it were, to find flight.

Students will work from several of the Cours de Dessin prints, completing a number of drawings during the nine-weeks of class-time. They will also be given prints to work on at home. Individual critiques will be given throughout, promoting ones critical awareness.

9 weeks | for graduates of course 2 | €295 | All materials included.

Upon completion of the Foundation and Application and Practice courses, students progress on to this next level, where they will work from the more complex series of prints from the Cours de Dessin, Section I, Models after Casts. They will be presented with problems involving tone/value transitions, as well as to those involving more elaborate forms and shapes. 

Through keen observation and specific exercises they will explore the effect of light (direct, diffused, reflective, its strength: dim or bright) on objects and how this can be convincingly represented. Modelling techniques that give a persuasive depiction of an object in space will be examined. This will be achieved through similar approaches as developed on the previous two courses, namely through generalisation and geometric reduction. Students will learn a way of seeing and of tonal treatment, as referred to by the French painter, Édouard Manet – “Look for the grand light and grand shadow, the rest will come of itself, and often doesn’t amount to much anyway.”

They will then work systematically from the basic to the complex, while developing a sensibility for what can be left out. There will be an in-depth examination of the plaster-cast drawings of artists throughout their careers, such as; Jacopo Tintoretto, Thomas Anshutz and Paul Cézanne – who made over a thousand drawings after plaster casts. The plaster casts in the Studio will be considered often.

Students will learn about the interplay of visible/invisible masses and forces that operate through the object and surrounding space, as well as learning to recreate by simplifying forms to their basic geometric equivalents. The aim is to bring a more substantive, sculptural and stable quality to their drawing, along with an appreciation for the integrity and dignity of simple forms.

Two-Day Intensive Artistic Anatomy Modelling Workshop | 9am – 6pm, Friday & Saturday | Available dates: 7th – 8th Sept | €325 per weekend | All materials included (Chavant NSP^TM modelling clay, full figure armature, modelling tools, notebook)

Weekend workshop | Modelling Course | Newcomer / All levels | TBC

This 2-day weekend workshop introduces students to the fundamentals concepts of modelling by starting with a series of exercises focusing on approach and methods of creating forms, analysing structure and proportion.

Students will work with water-based clay using white plaster casts from the iconic features of Michelangelo’s “David” as models to copy. Starting with basic reduction, the complex form is broken down to step by step easy to understand exercises.

During the course students will complete the eye, the nose, the mouth and the ear gaining a strong foundation which can be applied in traditional or digital model making.

Weekend workshop | Modelling Course | Newcomer / All levels | TBC

Students can continue their studies, modelling a life size model of the human head, learning about the proportions of the face, the skeletal landmarks of the skull and the muscles responsible for the expressions of the face. This approach is invaluable for the correct understanding of how to represent and reinterpret the human face. While the course is covering the fundamentals of portrait anatomy, it has a strong focus on proportion, structure, volume, form and introduces students to the hollowing of a clay portrait and finishing techniques with water based clay.