Short Courses:
Botanical Painting

Botanical Drawing - Roots and Bulbs

1-day course with Gillian Barlow
1 March 2010 (10.30am - 3.30pm)
£145 inclusive of VAT and lunch

Bulbs and roots, corms, tubers and rhizomes... a knobbly bearded iris rhizome with its stringy roots, the delicate netted tunic of the small spring iris and crocus, the tulip's glossy brown coat over the ivory bulb - we will go beyond the familiar garlic and onion, carrot and turnip!

Tangled roots are beautiful to draw and a variety of potted plants will be grown to offer a rooty range of subjects.

Participants may work in watercolours or, if preferred, make detailed drawings using pencil, crayon and fine pens, as your chosen subject suggests. Class size limited to 16.

Gillian Barlow trained at The Slade and the University of Sussex. She has exhibited worldwide as a botanical artist and is a tutor on our Diploma Course in Botanical Painting.

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First Steps in Botanical Painting

4-day workshop with Elaine Searle
19, 20, 21, 22 April 2010 (10.30am - 3.30pm)
£480 inclusive of VAT and lunch

This course introduces the basic skills of observation, drawing and watercolour painting necessary to produce your first plant portrait. Aimed at true beginners and those with very little experience, this 4-day course uses step-by-step teaching methods designed to take the fear out of getting started.

Elaine Searle BA Hons is a graduate (Dist) of the Diploma Course in Botanical Painting. She teaches both in the UK and USA and has paintings in the permanent collection of the Hunt Institute, The Highgrove Florilegium and private collections worldwide.

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Drawing from Nature

4 days (1 day a week) with Sarah Simblet
3, 10, 17, 24 June 2010 (10.30am - 3.30pm)
£480 inclusive of VAT and lunch

A new course aimed at those with Botanical Painting experience but wanting the opportunity to explore the value and excitement of drawing, its importance as a direct tool for seeing, dicovering, thinking, testing ideas, communicating and expressing ourselves.

Sarah will discuss making the best use of materials, the integral relationship between paper and the image, pictorial composition, how lines and marks work as illusions, how different speeds and pressures of mark communicate different meanings.

Pencil and paper will be the basic materials, with charcoal and pen or brush and ink as options.

Sarah Simblet, author of the highly acclaimed Anatomy for the Artist and The Drawing Book, is a visiting lecturer at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford, the National Gallery, London, and Bergen Architecture School, Norway. As an artist she has drawings in national and private collections, including the Royal Academy of Art. Sarah is also a regular broadcaster in art and science for radio and television.

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