Spring Doodle Course – six sessions – Tuesday 21st April – Tuesday 26th April – 7.00 – 8.30

Doodles are great, doodles are drawing without pressure, without judgment. Doodles are instinctive, we all doodle and no one comes along to tell us that we’re doing it wrong, because they’re ‘just’ doodles. But doodles are really drawing practice, and the best way to gain in confidence with drawing – and confidence in 90% of the battle when it comes to art – is just to draw. I proved this to myself by using doodle to overcome my feelings of inadequacy when I got a place on an MA illustration course, where starting to do a daily doodle and not worrying about what it was, slowly helped me reconnect with my drawing skills and help it become unconscious and fluid again.

Each session takes place via zoom and lasts for 90 minutes; after an introduction the camera will show you my workspace and hands as I draw each night’s doodle step by step. You can follow along live, or wait for the zoom video recording which comes with each session and watch and re-watch as you want afterwards. We rarely get the whole doodle finished in the session, but the idea is that you should go away equipped the finish to doodle yourself – and it’s a doodle, so if you don’t get it done, you’ve still learned just be doing.

You will need to bring art materials with you if you want to draw along – I usually recommend a smooth paper, printer card works really as it’s thicker than paper and smooth texture works well with pens and pencils, it’s also cheap. A selection of black fineliners, coloured pencils – if you want to treat yourself, coloured pencils are where to invest your money – white paint pens or gel pens, drawing pencils and an eraser.

A few days before the course starts you’ll get a welcome email with the zoom link, please do make sure you’re on a stable wi-fi connection and have a set up which will allow you to follow an online course.