In an increasingly IT-focused world it’s becoming all the more important for designers to keep in touch with their true craft and in particular to remind themselves of the practical skills that our ground-breaking forebears took as read as they blazed their trails across paper, with pencils….on drawing boards.
The ability to sketch isn’t just about creating impressive imagery to share with clients, it’s also a means by which any designer has a meaningful, flowing and iterative conversation with themselves while generating ideas, testing concepts through quick and intuitive hand sketches. Drawing is the act of thinking with a pencil and the more one gets comfortable in the company of pencil and paper the easier it is to roll the wheels of the creative process into motion as one embarks on a new design.
This fascinating and confidence-building three day interactive course (sister to our other drawing course Graphics for Garden Designers) begins with the essential skills of looking and seeing as a way of understanding how to read and interpret the world around us through the principles of perspective. We then spend time exploring line, tone and mark-making as we build our repertoire, before building our own amazing perspective sketches through carefully designed step by step exercises.
Alistair has been teaching the fine art of seeing, drawing and perspective in the UK and overseas for over thirty years and has developed a series of intuitive easy-to-follow freehand sketching exercises that take even the most novice of sketchers to new heights.
This course is aimed at designers who would like a deeper connection with the craft of drawing as both design and presentation tool as well as those who simply wish to become better at sketching. The emphasis on the course is on creating perspective sketch views from a plan-based design.
No drawing skills are required for this course, just a keenness to learn and a passion for creativity; we will start from scratch and take you through things at a pleasant pace. A list of what you need to bring will be issued on receipt of a booking, although plenty of paper will be available for you in the studio. You will have special access to the YSGD book library as well as our large format plotter for scanning, saving and printing out your work if you wish. Free tea and coffee will be available through the day in the teaching studio, and we ask that folks bring lunch with them each day or walk to one of the many nearby shops in Ripon to buy lunch.
We are limiting the class size to 12 on this course, to make sure all students get plenty of tutor feedback during practical exercises. We’re anticipating that this will be a popular course, so please book early to avoid disappointment. Payment in full is required to reserve your place on this course. Please refer to our Terms and Conditions here for information on cancellations and refunds.
Before booking on this course please check out our short course home page for our Learn and Save deals on two or more courses – the more you book the more you save!
If you would like to book accommodation nearby, please get in touch and we can send you some recommendations.