253: Return to Drawing

BLANKSPACE will be playing host to “Returning to Drawing”, our new fortnightly class dedicated to drawing technique and style.  The class is taught by local artist, art teacher and allotmenteer (!?) Sarah Sanders, and promises to be extremely rewarding.  For more information you can join the facebook group, or follow the blog (which has an informative FAQ).  The press release reads as follows:

The new class focuses on techniques, exercises and practical advice to build a new body of your work. Beginners and experienced artists welcome. The class takes place on the 1st & 3rd Wednesday of each month, at Blankspace, 43 Hulme Street, M15 6AW [how to find us], 7-9pm. The first class is Wednesday 6th April.

This is a drop in class so you can come when you want, but like any skill, drawing comes with time and practice so I advise you to come as often as you can. We will be drawing anything from kiwis to rock, ice to water. Please bring a sketchpad pencils in the range of 2B-8B, a craft knife and a putty rubber. This class is £5, and I'll provide tea, coffee and some biscuits.

Sarah also teaches life drawing classes at the Whitworth Art Gallery (first Saturday of the month, 2pm-4pm), and Sandbar (first and third Sundays of the month, 4.30pm).  For more info about Sarah’s life drawing classes, visit her blog Looking at Artists and the Body.  Together we are working on plans for an entire day of life drawing at BLANKSPACE.  More information about that soon, but the plan is to have it on a beautiful sunny summer day, and to approach various techniques for life drawing, with the aim of allowing students to create a complete piece of work.

I will certainly be getting down to life drawing classes, as I feel my technique has got very rusty.  When I was much younger I used to sit and draw for hours, sketching out every single object in the room on a single piece of paper; the room would appear as if unravelled from three- into two-dimensions.  That rather odd, obsessive habit seems to have left me (I blame the internet), and like this blog forces me to find the time to write, attending drawing classes should force me (gently) to find the time to draw.  I wonder if my parents still have any of these drawings; maybe a self-obsessed dive into my own juvenilia would make up the numbers for a blog post or two.

So, if you are an art student wanting to learn the fundamentals of your craft (and perhaps a little fed up with being forced to read Derrida and Foucault, snore), an enthusiastic amateur, seasoned pro, complete beginner, or a little rusty, then "Returning to Drawing" will have something for you.  Even if you just want something to keep you off the streets for a couple of hours and fancy a creative social event with tea and biscuits, then come on down to:

BLANKSPACE, 43 Hulme Street, Manchester M15 6AW