Life Drawing, Reinvented: Wed Eve

Service Description

Life drawing at Assembly Arts is a dynamic, exploratory experience designed for those with some prior drawing experience—whether from life drawing or other forms of observational drawing. Led by Sarah Galloway, these sessions challenge you to push beyond familiar approaches, experimenting with composition, materials, and technique. Each session begins with preparing your paper—building tone with charcoal, creating collage elements, or painting an ink background. From there, we dive into quickfire exercises such as non-dominant hand sketches, continuous line drawing, or working with a single medium like pastel or graphite. The session culminates in one or two longer poses (20–50 minutes), allowing you to apply techniques suggested by Sarah incorporating other methods as appropriate. Life drawing is one of the most effective ways for an artist to develop their skills. We all know what a human looks like, so it’s easy to assess whether you’ve captured their likeness—unlike a landscape or abstract subject, where interpretation plays a bigger role. This makes life drawing an invaluable training ground for improving observation, proportion, and expressive mark-making. We strongly encourage anyone looking to develop their creative practice to make it a regular part of their artistic routine. The atmosphere here at Assembly Arts is playful and experimental, with a balance of independent work and guided challenges. A mid-session coffee break fosters discussion and learning from each other, making this as much a social space as a creative one. All materials are provided, and your work is displayed in the corridor between sessions before being prepared for you to take home. Just bring yourself (and wear something you don’t mind getting a little messy). Please note this is an ongoing group. If you are experienced in life drawing, you are welcome to continue coming term after term, or to just drop into a few by selecting "Drop in" from our course list. This term is 5 weeks (£125) rather than the usual 6 weeks (£150) long.