Join artist Alice Angus for four inspiring, hands-on workshops celebrating the wonderful sea and shorebirds of the UK and the dramatic coastlines they call home.

Alice will share her passion for sketching birds and the sea, guiding you through her favourite techniques in soft pencil and watercolour. You’ll learn how to capture fast, expressive sketches as well as slower, more detailed studies and most importantly, discover your own unique way of seeing and drawing.

Together, we’ll explore the shapes, forms, and personalities of different bird species, studying how they move and interact with their coastal environments. Through fun and varied exercises, you’ll gain confidence in capturing gesture, rhythm, and energy – bringing your sketches to life.

Alice will bring the wild coasts to you with videos and photos from her drawing trips across the UK – from the Isle of May, Kintyre, and the Treshnish Isles, to the Outer Hebrides, the Thames Estuary, and the River Deben (home of Art Safari!).

Along the way, she’ll share her own work and that of other artists, discussing different ways to approach wildlife sketching. You’ll experiment with tone, contrast, and mark-making; play with colour and texture; and explore tips for drawing in the field, from video, or even from photos while keeping that “fresh from life” feeling in your art.

Come ready to get creative, get messy, and fall in love with the beauty and movement of Britain’s wild coastlines – one sketch at a time.

Week 1 – 14th Jan – Winter Waders – The winter brings thousands of waders to our shores. We will focus on four of the most iconic, waders we see in on the marshes and mudflats;- Avocets, Curlews, Oystercatcher and Lapwing giving us an array of beautiful shapes and movement to study.

Week 2 – 21st Jan – Auks – Spring brings Puffins, Razorbills and Guillemots to the dramatic seabird cliffs of the UK to breed. We will look at their beautiful graphic colouring, their shapes and interactions and the vertiginous habitats they nest in.

Week 3 – 28th Jan – Divers – We will enjoy sketching the shapes. colours and movements of Northern Gannets, Shags and Cormorants. These birds are a joy to study with their large muscular bodies, long snake like necks and brightly coloured eyes, the gannets white, ochre and black colouring and the shags iridescent green and bronze feathers.

Week 4 – 4th Feb – Ducks – We will focus on Eiders, Shovelers and Shell duck which all have magnificent breeding plumage, the males are graphic and colourful, the females are blends of ochres, golden browns and blacks. In late winter large flocks of male Eiders can often be seen bobbing offshore, their plumage reflected in the water, or roosting in beds of green, red and golden seaweed.

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.

Each session is approximately 2 hours long with a short comfort break in-between.

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.)
• 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.