Atelier Draw Book a placeBook
Used paintbrushes with worn bristles, close and grainy
0
hours drawn · before any of it looks like anything

Line before style.

Twelve weeks of charcoal and newsprint. No shading. No colour. No style.A drawing school with one rule for the first term: get the line right. Everything else is taught after, and comes faster than you'd think.

Book a place
01 · The rule

The jug, four times.

Everyone draws the same jug on the first day and the last. In between: line only. When the line is right, the tone takes a week. When the line is wrong, no amount of shading saves it.

1
Week 1 · one line. No lifting the charcoal.
02 · Hours

Three hundred hours. Then it starts.

0
hours · one tally each
Hour one. It looks like nothing.The jug on newsprint, in charcoal, and it's wrong in eleven ways. We'll show you three of them. The other eight you'll find yourself by hour forty.
A woman in a striped shirt standing at a bright window in a plain room

You'll draw badly for three months. That's the course.

Nobody good got good by being told they were. The studio is quiet, the paper is cheap, the criticism is specific, and by week ten the line is yours. Style, when it comes, will be yours too.

Courses

Three ways in. Same jug.

Foundation is the course. The other two are for people who've done it, or who can't do twelve Tuesdays in a row.

01 · Twelve weeks · TuesdaysFoundation

Line, then tone, then the figure. Three hours a week in the studio, and about twelve at home if you want it to take. Twelve places.

£780 · materials included
02 · Ten days · AugustSummer intensive

Foundation, compressed, six hours a day. Faster and harder. Some people prefer it. They're usually the ones who've tried it slowly first.

£1,400 · lunch included
03 · Thursday eveningsLife room

A model, two hours, no teaching unless you ask. For people who've done Foundation and want the room, the light, and the habit.

£22 · a session, or £180 for ten
What to bring

Almost nothing. That's deliberate.

Expensive paper makes people careful, and careful is the enemy of a good line. We buy newsprint by the ream and charcoal by the box, and you use them like they're free, because they nearly are.

PaperNewsprint, A1, provided. About four hundred sheets over twelve weeks. Most go in the bin. That's the point of newsprint.
CharcoalWillow, provided. Not compressed, not pencil. It smudges, breaks, and won't let you be precious.
A ragYours. An old T-shirt. It's the eraser, the blender, and where your hands go.
ClothesOnes that can take charcoal. Everything can, once. Not the good coat.
Not a sketchbookNot for the first term. Small paper makes small drawings. We'll tell you when.
Book

Book a place.

Foundation starts in January, April and September. Twelve places, and a wait list that moves. Come to an open evening first if you like; there's one the Thursday before each term.

Book a place