Young Artists Summer Holiday | Drawing London (15 - 18 years)

Book now

Drawing London: The pulse of the inner-city - capturing the rhythms and crowds that bring London to life.

“The story of the crowd is the story of civilization” - Dan Hancox.

Exploring London through its unifying rhythms, this course aims to consider the city as a living, breathing entity, examining how how it connects to  the people who give it life.

In this 5-day course young artists will explore the ways in which crowds make up the lifeblood of London. They will document their journey through the city, capturing the people, movement, and energy of the spaces around them.

Since the dawn of industrialisation artists have responded to the vibrancy of urban life, from Umberto Boccioni to Burial and Pattrick Keiller to Hermann Warm. Taking inspiration from artists, set designers, musicians, and writers who use a citys movement and sounds as a backdrop to their work, we will dive into the question of what it means to be part of a sprawling metropolis. With London as inspiration, young artists will document its winding streets and close-knit communities.

On out of house days, young artists will document London’s frenetic energy through observational drawing and mark making. They will explore city-scapes from the Deptford market to the transient hustle and bustle of London’s City Mile.  Over the course of a week students will capture the multitudes of different crowds that make up a city and explore concepts such as  psychogeography, crowd psychology, and dance theory to investigate the underlying harmony that flows through the veins of a city and this can be translated into their  art works and drawings.

The course will conclude with “Theatre of the city” in the Shoreditch studios. Students will create a set inspired by German expressionist theatre and set designers whose creations are a reflection of vibrancy of inner-city life. Informed by what we have learnt over the week, students will create a theatre set as a group. They will then collaborate with a model to incorporate the movement, sounds, and imagery collected out of house to bring London to life in the studio.

Students will:

  • Expand observational skills to be able to better document beyond simply observation.
  • Experiment with capturing the movement and rhythm of a scene through drawing.
  • Discover their own unique visual language and better understand their personal approaches to mark making.
  • Explore artists, writers, musicians, and set designers who have created works in response to the vibrancy of inner-city life.
  • Establish connections between movement and drawing to better understand how to manipulate material in expressive ways.
  • At the end of the course students will have the tools to document their own journeys and translate the sensation of a scene beyond observation.

To attend this course students must have a good level of spoken English.

Please note we do not take group bookings for our courses.

Part of this course will take place out of house in zones 1 or 2.

Part of this course will take place in house at the Royal Drawing School.

A full schedule will be shared in advance.