Learning to draw: from pencil to pixel to iPad
Weekend-long practical course
24 November 2018 10.30am - 5.30pm25 November 2018 10.30am - 5.30pm
The Life Room, RA Schools, Royal Academy of Arts
£420 Includes all materials, lunch and wine reception at the end of the first day.
Terms and conditions
In a contemporary update to the venerable legacies of drawing from life and from antique casts, this course explores both traditional media and Apple’s iPad Pro and Apple Pencil technologies.
The RA Schools’ Head of Fine Art Processes and renowned figurative artist Mark Hampson leads this specialist drawing workshop, inspired by the RA’s new exhibition vaults, demonstrating the history and importance of learning to draw.
'Anyone who likes drawing and mark-making will like to explore new media. Picasso would have gone mad with this (iPad). So would Van Gogh. I don’t know an artist who wouldn’t actually.''
'Until I saw my drawings replayed on an iPad, I’d never seen myself draw.'
David Hockney RA
'….It’s a new medium and it’s here to stay’
Richard Benefield, Deputy Director of the de Young Museum, San Francisco
When the RA Schools were founded in 1769, life drawing, anatomical study and copying from casts of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture were the central activities of a fine-art education and regarded as the skills essential to the practice of all artists.
If we fast-forward 250 years, artists now have an astonishing plethora of mediums, forms and approaches to explore, yet drawing and painting remain relevant for many contemporary artists and their audiences.
Developments in new technologies have both challenged and enhanced the opportunity to create art using painting and drawing-based approaches. Pixels and electronic light are now just as crucial to a contemporary artist’s arsenal as pencils, charcoal and graphite were to previous generations.
This course will focus on the latest developments and emerging possibilities in the recently launched iPad Pro, with its touchscreen drawing tablet, and the innovative Apple Pencil. These technologies have opened up new opportunities for artists and illustrators to draw digitally with a more nuanced touch, sensitivity, dexterity and creative flow than had ever been thought possible. Using this technology, artists can now alter the weight, scale and density of their line and brushwork in ways that more successfully emulate the feeling of their direct physical counterparts.
Drawing from life develops essential skills in meditative analysis, focus, discipline and acute observation, while also encouraging playful experimentation, hand-eye coordination and expressive gesture. Drawing using modern technology continues to embrace these essential skills, while extending and enhancing the possibilities of image manipulation, hybrid fusing of approach and appropriation, and contemporary image-sharing and distribution.
About the course
Taking place in the vaults, cast corridor and historic Life Room within the RA Schools, this specialist weekend course covers all aspects of figure drawing using both traditional and digital methods, including the use of exciting new technology to create initial sketches and fully realised layered compositions.
It will introduce creative approaches to screen-based image construction, including layering techniques, mark-making, digital colour drawing and image manipulation, working directly on touchscreen tablets from nude models, écorche figures and antique casts.
The course will explain how to develop skills using digital technology that combines approaches in drawing, painting and photography. It introduces techniques in layering, image manipulation, filter effects, digital pencil work, colour palette choices and image selection, saving and sharing. In doing so it embraces traditional artistic skills such as observation, line work, tonal and colour shading, spatial awareness, related anatomy and image creation that merges analogue, digital and photographic sources.
Participants will work predominantly with the iPad Pro and digital pencil technology in combination with some comparative paper-based substrates from both male and female models and still-life set-ups.
This course is suitable for enthusiastic and curious beginners as well as those with previous experience of drawing (not necessarily iPad drawing), who wish to further develop their understanding of digital applications and new digital pencil technology.
This course is for you if:
• You are curious to learn how to approach digital drawing from the model and historic casts in a creative and supportive professional environment using iPad technology, or wish to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the implications of digital drawing and painting.
• You want to explore digital approaches informed by a rich historical context and the experience of a contemporary art school, delivered by a specialist tutor.
• You would enjoy the thrill of experimenting with cutting-edge digital art techniques and would appreciate an intense insight into the various applications and outcomes available.
• You would appreciate an insight into the historic working methods and artistic journey as experienced by students of the Royal Academy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Minimum age 18
The number of participants is strictly limited to enable detailed feedback from the course tutor.
£420
Saturday 24 – Sunday 25 November 2018
10.30am – 5.30pm on both days
Includes:
• An introduction to the RA with special reference to works in both the RA Schools and collections galleries, focusing on approaches to drawing, painting and printmaking in relation to both traditional and digital art
• An introduction to creative image production using iPad Pro and digital pencil technologies
• All specialist practical art materials including the loan of iPad Pro and Apple Pencils for the duration of the course
• Access to both male and female professional life models throughout the course
• Access to historic teaching resources and tools
• Lunch and refreshments on both days
• A drinks reception at the end of the first day
• A certificate of participation upon course completion
About the tutor
Mark Hampson
Painter and printmaker Mark Hampson has held over 40 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 200 international group exhibitions. His work has been seen throughout Europe, Asia and the United States at museums, galleries and in-site responsive installations. Recently these have included the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, the William Morris Gallery in London and the Kunst Museum in Vienna.
In 2012 the RA hosted his solo exhibition, Almost Real Art following his two-year artist residency in the RA Collections and Library. Drawing, the figure, narrative and humour are all crucial aspects of his art, leading him to be described as a ‘Contemporary Hogarthian Conceptualist’.
In addition to his professional career as an artist, he has had a prolific teaching career that has embraced the teaching of drawing, printmaking, sculpture, painting, graphics, illustration and fashion. As part of this he served as senior tutor in printmaking for 14 years at the Royal College of Art, before joining the RA Schools in 2013 as Head of Fine Art Processes, running the sculpture, printmaking and digital media specialities. In 2007 he was made a senior fellow of the RCA.
His work is represented in numerous private and public collections including the V&A, the Arts Council of Great Britain, Hyundai Arts Collection, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Krakow Museum and the Osaka Prefectural Government collection.
Mark has worked with digital technologies in printmaking and textile production as an integral aspect of his studio practice for 20 years. In 2015 he led the first ever iPad Pro life drawing class as an event for Apple at the RA Schools, a historic moment for both organisations.
About the space
The Life Room
The Royal Academy’s historic Life Room sits at the heart of the RA Schools. Usually closed to the public, this unique and significant space was designed in the 1860s, when the galleries and art school first moved to Burlington Gardens.
The semi-circular seating arrangement, based on an ancient design, traces its British history back to Hogarth’s Academy in St Martin’s Lane from around 1730. Directional light is used to enhance the delineation of the model’s musculature and aid life drawing, which has been practised in this room by generations of Royal Academy artists and students.
Our courses and classes programme
Our programme of short courses and classes offers the opportunity to explore a range of subjects, led by expert tutors and practising artists.