Online Drawing Development Year 2024 Exhibition

26 February – 5 March 2025

In 2024 a group of 39 artists from around the world participated in the Online Drawing Development Year (ODDY) at the Royal Drawing School. Scattered across five continents and many more time zones, they came together online united by a love of drawing and a desire to deepen their artistic practice.

This exhibition brings together work from the year, rich in observation and imagination. The artists come from a dizzying array of places, from USA, Brazil and New Zealand to Sweden, Portugal, Iran and India to name a few. The artists themselves also come from a variety of backgrounds including fine art, animation, illustration, design, architecture, fashion, healthcare, journalism, and art history.

Find out more about each artist on the exhibition website or follow them @royaldrawingschoolODDY24.

Exhibiting artists: Anabela Ferreira, Anne Keleny, Carol Rensink, Carolina Sardinha, Charlie O’Sullivan, Edwina Bridgeman, Elaine Burke, Emily Bornoff, Emma Brati, Federica Bossi, Georgia Coxon, Gisselle Martinez, Hugo Shakeshaft, Jane McKeating, Jen Allanson, Kate Orton, Katie Vicary, Kelcey Loomer, Kelly Zou, Lilia Kodunova, Marcelo Albagli, Marye Toxopeus, Maylene Chou, Megan Landes, Mina Ðurović, Nadezhda Zimina, Nazanin Hosseini, Neha Luthra, Noémia Herdade Gomes, Nora Suárez, Phoebe Stone, Sibylle Laubscher, Siobhan Rosenthal, Sol Jeong, Sonja Witts, Stefanie Trow, Steve Melluish, Tom Oxley, Wolfgang Woerner.

“Days of one-to-one sessions, looking at students’ ongoing portfolios, were indeed globe-spinning. I sat at my desk in Glasgow and was greeted in rooms in India and Iran, in Canada and America, Montenegro and Portugal, between my breakfast and teatime. What struck me, both in these private and in the wider group meetings, was that this was no gimmick or last resort, but that drawings really did have a power to reach out from these scattered places, to say or show things in a way that words could not — a dialogue starts up between two people’s drawings, it develops as other drawings interject. We had no shared mother tongue but were communicating through these drawn images, sharing the wayward inventions of our lines, realising, perhaps for the first time, that others like us were excited, obsessive even, about the places that this language could lead us, that like us they might have no clue where they were being led, but that we were all sharing the ride.”

Royal Drawing School Tutor, Liza Dimbleby

Online Drawing Development Year is an innovative course that has been devised for arts graduates and those with a developing studio practice. Offering live online drawing tuition and a structured critical dialogue with tutors, mentors, and peers. Flexible and part-time, students curate their own programme of courses over three terms. The course runs from January to December.

Drawing by Charlie O’Sullivan