Drawing people On Stage, Brighton, UK, May 27-29

Pushing Your Sketching Boundaries in Brighton

Contact: e-mail Isabel: isacarand@gmail.comfor information and a registration form

Brighton developed as a fashionable seaside resort in the 18th century and has been popular ever since;  recently, it has been said to be the “happiest place to live in the UK”. It has a great diverse community, a great music and arts culture scene, and great quirky shopping areas.  

The big highlight of Brighton’s cultural scene is its Arts Festival each year in May and The Brighton Fringe the open access mixed arts event that runs annually alongside it. We are very pleased to be taking part of the Fringe with this workshop drawing People in Brighton.

The workshop will be hosted at The Marwood Cafe in The Lanes, near many of the venues where will be out sketching at. During both morning and afternoon workshop sessions we will be out sketching in various locations nearby, the North Laines, the Pavilion Gardens, The Lanes, the beach, the open market, seeking out events and activities that take place during the Fringe as well,  where people is out and about, to record and lose the fear of drawing people once and for all.

It will be fun but hard work, as you will be enjoying learning and experimenting all the  time, trying out different ways of drawing and mark making, sketching in various media and using line and colour in all forms without fear, sharing the work we do and discussing our findings intensely.  

Each of the instructors will explore different themes of Drawing People

People in Context (Isabel)

When drawing and sketching people to me there are two things – one the person in its own right – the character and personality, what they do/what they are… and then the context – the room/street/square, the action they are doing – selling/playing/talking.

In drawing people we get to know them – and we think about who they are – so we will exercise talking to each other and to others and try to find out more about them whilst we draw them and letting that influence the drawing.

FB_IMG_1445176462963.jpg  FB_IMG_1445176472169.jpg

When drawing larger groups of people – the bar/ the market/the beach/people around a table, the context brings them together creating the scene. It is this setting the scene that tells us the story of what is going on, we need to decide how and how much we will include or if an element will stand out in colour.

Copy of Scan_000621_2.jpg  Copy of Scan_000621_3.jpg

NewYearGame.jpg

We will experiment with diverse treatments for the scene (setting) and the action (people) – watercolour wash and line and diversifying the marks for foreground and background, trying out what happens when you draw the background first or the people first or together.  

2016-01-11 20.41.21.jpg

Rhythm (Rolf)

Especially when drawing a scene with people involved, one has to deal with a constantly changing ‘set of objects’. This is on the one hand a benefit – by choosing from different points in time the sketcher can compose an image, that tells the story of that place in the lapse of time he spends on location in just one image. On the other hand it is a challenge, that can be hard to master, as the view changes too fast to be drawn and plans date out quickly.

We want to deal with this challenge by trying and exercising different strategies:

– drawing immediately from moving objects with blind contours (draw while observing)

– drawing from ‘flash-observations’ by memorizing and ‘reconstructing’ them (observe and then draw)

– experiment with degrees of abstraction – what does it need, to make a shape on paper a living thing?

– identifying looping actions and drawing multiple of those with changing focus.

The aim is to find an own work rhythm, suitable to a location and our own attitude, a ‘groove’ that links us to the environment, so that we can at the same time enjoy and sketch a concert, a theatre play, or just the mundane actions on a street.

caras_blindcontour_191215 copy.jpg   U9_191215 copy.jpg

left: drawing people without looking on the paper (blind contour) right: incomplete, but finished (for good or for bad, musician has left the train)

 

left: stage scene, done with changing focus, drawing the musician that plays in a typical pose or mode, while the others might pause, trying to keep a ‘calligraphic’ rhythm of lines, in ‘groove’ with the music. right:  bus stop scene, layering figures in different states of completeness, composing a group from asynchronously appearing travellers.

layering looping poses

media: though the exercises might work with a paint-attempt, I myself will focus on lines. Every participant may use the tools, he is most comfortable with (since they are quick at hand), I suggest soft pencil, all kind of markers, fountain – and brush pen. ‘Casual’ sketchbook or loose papers – there will be a lot of quick and scrawly results …

Brushing people, marking people (Swasky)

People moving, people going around, back and forth,… We do not have time, we need to capture them we want to depict them in our sketchbook. Using a loose and unpredictable technique like watercolour instead of a fountain pen or a ballpoint pen lowers our likeness standards, details become less important and our goal is to capture gestures, expressions, moods and feelings. Brush and watercolour markers (or watercolour pencils) will be our drawing tools.

Some themes we will explore:

  1. Capturing people’s feelings. We are going to pay attention to people’s faces and we will try to communicate what they are expressing with their face features. Just using brush as our drawing tool we are going to draw people faces, paying attention to eyebrows, expression wrinkles, mouth, eyes,…

  1. Depicting movement. Action and movement is people´s nature. Nevertheless, we are scared of this, what’s more we tend to avoid them as much as we can. In a city, architecture is important but people are  equally important . Thanks to them we know the city better, human beings give the scale to cities.

  1. Telling people stories. Now we will observe also context as part of the human being as I have mentioned before here will notice the link between someone and his or her context. We will be among stages, people acting, singing,… and we will tell their stories.

This session will help attendees to successfully deal the fear of drawing people. Because drawing people is less scary than drawing skyscrapers, too much windows.

Learning goals

  • Pushing participants out of their comfort zone, at their own level. From beginners starting to sketch to more confident participants, we aim to teach you something new and push you outside your boundaries, helping you experiment.

  • Experiment with different techniques and ways of approaching a live sketching people situation, helping you find your own self expression.

  • Using and trying different approaches to drawing people – line drawing with brushes,  marker pens and watercolour pencils, painting with watercolours, light and shade,

  • Develop your own way of representing what you see in colour with confidence

  • Improving mark making ability – with pen, with brush,

  • Losing the fear to draw people

  • Sketching people and their stories in the stage of a big festival

Workshop Schedule

Thursday 26th May 2016

5pm  Welcome at our base Marwood café


Friday 27th May 2016


9am -10am    Welcome and get together at our base Marwood café

10am-1pm     Morning worskhops with Swasky, Rolf and Isabel

1pm – 2.30pm  Lunch

2.30 – 5.30pm   Afternoon workshops with Swasky, Rolf  and Isabel

5.45pm  Return to Marwood – review and share work of the day on line

Saturday 28th May 2016

9am -10am    Welcome and get together at our base Marwood café

10am-1pm     Morning worskhops with Swasky, Rolf and Isabel

1pm – 2.30pm  Lunch

2.30 – 5.30pm   Afternoon workshops with Swasky, Rolf  and Isabel

5.45pm  Return to Marwood – review and share work of the day on line

Sunday 29th May 2016

9am -10am    Welcome and get together at our base Marwood café

10am-1pm     Morning worskhops with Swasky, Rolf and Isabel

1pm – 2.30pm  Lunch

2.30 – 5.30pm   Afternoon workshops with Swasky, Rolf  and Isabel

5.45pm  Return to Marwood – review and share work of the day on line

Monday 30th May 2016

Meet at Marwood Cafe at 11am for coffee and start sketchcrawl  11am to 3pm – open to all

Workshop map

Brighton workshop map here

Participants

30 attendees maximum, 18 minimum. Any level of experience is welcome.

Accommodation

We recommend the Tourist information as a first point of call

Link here: Visit Brighton Accommodation

Supply list

A list will be provided for participants – we will be working with various drawing media, pencils, pens, watercolours and marker pens.

Registration fee

£ 225 – (£180 concessions – 20% discount for students or unwaged -with proof of concession status)

To book – e-mail Isabel: isacarand@gmail.com for a registration form.

(Payment can be via cheque, internet bank transfer or paypal)

Cancellation policy: All fees are fully refundable if cancelled prior to 25 April 2016. If cancelled after 25 April a £25 cancellation fee will be retained. In the event of too few registrants, all monies will be refunded.

About the instructors

Isabelis Spanish but studied in UK where she practices as an architect and artist in Newbury, Berkshire.  Her passion is watercolour, easy to carry around and sketch on the go and likes experimenting and mixing media to get interesting effects. Isabel started sketching in 1993 as part of her architecture training and continues to this day. She joined Urban Sketchers Spain in 2011 and USK London in 2014 where she runs the Facebook group and organises some of their Let’s Draw events.   

As an artist she is part of West Berkshire and North Hampshire Open Studios scheme and joined the Oxford Printmakers Cooperative in 2013.

http://www.isacarmona-sketches.blogspot.co.uk

http://www.isacarmona-art.com

Rolf lives in Berlin and is sketching from observation as a passion since his youth, while currently drawing for stone-design, architecture and occasional bits of illustration for the living. After an apprenticeship as stonemason he achieved an architecture degree at the RWTH Aachen. While studying there he was teaching observational drawing as a student assistant at the architecture department. He joined USk in 2009 and co-founded the berlin.USk-blog in 2011. Since this time sketching more and more became the grout, that fills most gaps in his everyday live.

http://skizzenblog.rolfschroeter.com

http://berlin.urbansketchers.org/search/label/rolf%20schroeter

http://www.facebook.com/rrschroeter

http://www.instagram.com/rolfschroeter/

Swasky born and raised in Barcelona, Swasky has been drawing most of his lifetime, but when he finished his BFA he left drawing because he tried to start working. Then he decided to start again a degree in Audiovisual Communication. Once he fulfill his second degree he worked in an advertising production company, RCR, disappointed with a job so stressful and invidious he left his job and run a shop. With a new life he started drawing again.  

http://urbansketchers.org/search/label/Swasky

https://www.facebook.com/drawingswasky

https://instagram.com/swasky/

http://www.swasky.es

Addendum – About the Brighton Fringe

Brighton Fringe is England’s largest arts festival and one of the largest fringe festivals in the world. We set out to stimulate, educate and entertain a diverse range of people through a diverse range of art forms. And all this in an iconic city with unique cultural heritage.

Their Website shows the exhilaration of all the art and performances that took place last year during May in Brighton and are very excited to have the opportunity of joining them in 2016 and to offer our on urban sketching workshop “Drawing People on Stage”.

Facebook Event – Drawing People On Stage at the Brighton Festival




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