We would love you to join us for these new intensive virtual workshops led on zoom by Alice Angus!

Together we will explore the wonderful autumn and winter wildlife of the UK. Over the four workshops, Alice shares her love of sketching wildlife in soft pencil and watercolour. Alice will help you to capture an animal’s shape, movement and mood by creating quick drawings as well as working on slower studies.

Sketching wildlife is lots of fun and involves looking, listening, and using all our senses. We study different wildlife, learning simple ways to capture their unique shapes, forms and structure.  In each 1.5hr session we look at each animal’s behaviour and movements too, so you can bring life into your sketches.

Looking at stills and video footage of live wildlife, and their habitats, Alice will guide you through fun exercises that will help you to extend your drawing technique and to find the form, movement and essence of the animals and birds.

We will use various approaches and enjoyable exercises to explore the subject,: – fast sketching to develop your visual memory and confidence, slower studies looking at shapes and details, tone and contrast, mark making for movement, textures, colour and colour mixing.

We will be sketching with soft pencil, watercolour and soluble graphite. You can use any other water-based materials you might have.  Also Alice will show examples of her own work and the work of other artists and discuss the different ways you can approach wildlife sketching.

To help you take these techniques outside and into your own practice, we will also discuss techniques for drawing in the field, drawing from video and ways to keep drawings done from photos feeling alive.

Week 1 – 20th November – Estuary wildlife In autumn the UK’s salt marshes are thrumming with new arrivals of geese, winter waders and duck giving us an array of beautiful shapes and colours to sketch.

Week 2 – 27th November – Garden wildlife As autumn changes into winter our parks and gardens are home to a glorious array of wildilfe that is easier to see as the leaves fall. We will sketch some lovely, colourful, characterful garden inhabitants from tiny mice to squirrels, robins and bluetits.

Week 3 – 4th December – Forest wildlife The magnificent red deer is our largest wild animal and in late autumn the forest resounds with the sounds of the deer rut while the animals look magnificent with their deep red coats and huge antlers. We will sketch the deer along with the winter berries holly, mistletoe and hawthorn that bring pops of colour to the forest.

Week 4 – 11th December – Sea Shore wildlife The winter brings tens of thousands of grey seals to the UKs beaches to have their pups, among the beautifully coloured seaweeds and lychen covered rocks. Alice will guide you in drawing these highly entertaining creatures among their most beautiful seashore habitats.

Feedback and advise on your work are available during the workshop via your webcam and after the workshop in the Art Safari Facebook Group.

The workshop will also be recorded so you will be able to watch the video online afterwards.

What You Will Need

A Laptop, Macbook, PC, iPad or tablet

• About 15 sheets of medium or heavy cartridge AND about 8 sheets of smooth or “not” watercolour paper (or very heavy good quality cartridge) up to A2 size or 16 x 20”.
• Some scrap cartridge paper or a sketch pad for experiments, note taking and fast sketching – up to about 6 sheets
• You are welcome to work in a sketchbook for some exercises if you wish.
• A few paint brushes, suitable for your medium in different shapes and sizes. There is no need to buy any new brushes we will work with what you have. (If you are interested Alice likes to use a cheap synthetic flat brush about 1.5” wide that she has cut up a bit, a medium round synthetic watercolour brush, a bigger mop style brush and a narrow long pointy brush like a rigger or sword liner. If you have Chinese calligraphy brushes bring them as Alice uses them too.)
• Found tools for making soft and hard marks – such as sticks, feathers, fork, pine cone, sponge, cotton wool – anything you like.
• Pencils – Alice uses soft graphite pencils like 4B, 6B and soluble graphite pencils. (Alice uses soft water soluble graphite pencils and large soluble graphite blocks made by Art Graf and Derwent, these are not essential for the course but bring some if you have them.)
• Water based colour that can be used for transparent washes – this can be anything like watercolour, gouache, ink, inktense, graphite and so on. Alice works in watercolour using classic colours which give the warms and colds in each colour (a ‘double primary’ palette) comprised of a lemon yellow, a deep yellow, a bright red, a dark crimson, an ultramarine blue, acobalt blue, a yellow ochre, a burnt umber and a burnt sienna. Alice mixes all her greens but you are welcome to use premixed if you it some.
• Rubber
• Kitchen towel or rags
• Easel or table easel or other means of holding your paper flat or at a gentle angle. Paint palette large jars for water.