The Grammar of Drawing at Dillington House

This course seeks to re-establish the centrality of drawing to art practise. Using everyday objects and the landscape around us, we will learn how to measure and to accurately depict our world.

We will learn which marks to use when we wish to evoke light and shade, for example, or when we wish to create texture or movement. 

We will learn how to create spatial depth using the rules of perspective and discover what is meant by chiaroscuro and nōtan. 

We will come to understand the difference between line and tone, and study the fine difference between reality and abstraction.  

But we will also play, for in play, we may discover how drawing can help us to create a language that is uniquely our own.  No previous art experience is necessary, only an enthusiastic an open mind.

The Grammar of Drawing is a four day residential course in a superb country house setting and runs from 21 February to 25 February 2011. 

For more information visit www.dillington.com

Beauty In The Eye Of The Beholder?

Pick any object. The chances are, the longer you look at it, the more interesting it will become. Drawing and painting help to focus the attention and coax the mind into seeing the beauty that is always present. Beauty, however, is not an attribute of the object in view and to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is merely to suggest that everyone's appreciation of beauty is different (I think sprouts are beautiful, but you might not). Rather say, beauty is in the mind of the beholder; the result of deep understanding, when one at last becomes intimate and fully acquainted with one's subject.