Join Mark Saich (woodland manager and green woodworker) and me for a fun and creative day making your own drawing charcoal and exploring the many ways it can be used for mark making in your art.
The course varies each time, but always begins with an introduction to making your own charcoal, a charcoal burn, and a tour of the ancient woodland.
Drawing activities
We change things up and adapt sessions to the season and the people in the group each time, but some indicative themes are:
Playing with Charcoal - exploring mark making and textures. Making small test pieces to respond to your material and location, and developing experiments in to bigger drawings.
Space, light and shadow - getting depth and space in your woodland drawings. Layering, erasing, masking and rubbing back to build up a drawing.
From a single plant, to a whole tree - capturing the environment, change and growth at different scales.
Tactics for finding your way into a drawing when there’s too much to look at.
Making expressive drawings of a walk through the wood, and turning them in to a concertina fold book.
About the venue
Walderchain Wood is a 23 acre ancient woodland site in the Elham valley area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB), about 20mins south of Canterbury. The woodland is managed to continuously supply timber as a material and fuel, to enhance biodiversity and natural stability and for amenity value.
Classes will be held in a semi-covered woodland clearing, a robust open sided workshop or a warm dry workshop - depending on time of year and weather conditions.
Parking is on site, close to the teaching area. There are toilet and wash facilities onsite.
The venue is a 10-15min walk from the nearest bus stops (Mill Lane /Derringstone Hill or Old Chalk Pit Barham) or 15-20min walk from the Jackdaw in Denton.
What's included in the price?
All materials
Home-made vegetarian Lunch and refreshments
Loads of self-made drawing charcoal to take home
Cancellation policy
Cancellation and a full refund can be obtained up to 4 weeks before the course starts.