One Week Holiday Course // Birds and Beasts: Drawing Living Forms

Across many ages and cultures around the world, creatures both real and invented have played a central role in conveying meaning through ritual objects, drawings and works of art. From the realms of the home, the wild, religion and myth, artists’ depictions of animals over time reveal the changing relationship between humanity and the natural world. The earliest-known example of figurative drawing was recently discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. It depicts a wild pig and three human-like figures; the interaction of man and beast over 51,000 years ago. In this online course we travel from the Ice Age to the present day, considering how humans have visualised and recorded animals in different cultural contexts to ignite ideas, connections and inspiration for our own work.

Over the week, we journey through air, land, water and into our imaginations to seek out the subjects which most captivate us and test out fresh approaches; from our tools and materials to the soundscapes we work in. Animals invite us to be playful with our process and the possibilities of drawing as we explore texture, movement, essence and abstraction; be it mark-making to birdsong or painting with feathers. There will be opportunities to draw both from observation and imagination with a range of media and reference material; working from paintings, sculpture, film, anatomical diagrams and life. All levels of experience welcome.