Exploring art for creative wellbeing

Programme overview

This course is about developing a personalised approach to drawing and painting, while still learning the essential skills required to produce a good work of art. You'll learn the key methods and techniques to develop your skills, while drawing and painting subjects of your choosing. We do tend to focus on representational art, but if you'd like to explore more creative or abstract art, that's fine provided learning is taking place.

Programme content

For new learners, the start of the course is about learning some basic drawing and painting skills and working out your starting point for your learning journey. From this you will develop a more personalised approach to learning how to draw and paint, on a longer project. Along the way you will learn to draw using shapes and angles, tonal theory and when you develop into painting, we'll cover colour mixing, assessing your artwork etc. We'll also be discussing how art can 'wash the dust from the soul' (to quote Picasso), and use it to help develop a relaxed mindset.

Who this course is for

This course is aimed at anyone wanting to either learn to draw from scratch, or those with a basic drawing skill seeking to develop their skills.

Experience and knowledge needed

No prior drawing knowledge needed, just a willingness to learn something new. Ideally, you should have a Google account (we use Google Classroom as part of the course), and have a moderate knowledge on how to use basic IT skills - sending emails, typing short sentences in a document and so on.

Materials and equipment

You will need access to a phone with a camera, a PC or laptop and have an email address. A Google email account would be beneficial. If you have a printer as well that would be ideal.

Access to the internet will be essential as demonstrations will be done via YouTube links by other artists.

Art materials required:

Drawing - you will need the basic drawing equipment:

• standard graphite pencils (graded pencils HB, 2B and 4B for example)
• a sketch pad (A4)
• white paper
• an eraser

Painting - you will need:

• a set of acrylic or oil paints, ideally in the following colours: titanium white, yellow ochre, cadmium red, a blue (cobalt or ultramarine), cerulean (or pthalo) blue, sap green, raw or burnt umber, black
• a set of brushes - small and medium size rounds in soft synthetics, a medium size flat or filbert in stiffer synthetic or hog's hair
• a palette of some kind (an old plate will do)
• a thinners or water jar
• appropriate thinners (turps or white spirit for oils, water for acrylics)
• a painting medium if you can get one: Winsor & Newton Liquin Original for oils, slow drying medium for acrylics
• if you choose to use watercolours, you will find the colours mentioned above useful

Your tutor will send you presentations, hand-outs and feedback through the Google Classroom page.

Assessment

Your tutor will give you constructive verbal feedback in class each session and written feedback on your individual learner plan. You will set your own targets and write a short sentence about how your work has gone during the session each week.

Accreditation 

This course is not accredited.

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