Life drawing course with artist Toby Wiggins (6 weeks)

‘The working drawing- draw to discover’ 

Join this unique life drawing course with Toby Wiggins, winner of the Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture 2023.

The act of drawing changes our way of seeing. Working with an experienced life model, you will learn new ways to think about the human form, how to capture the essence of a pose and work with a variety of materials towards a new confidence, vitality and precision within your own practice.

In these 2 hour sessions, each student will be encouraged to go at their own pace with as much or as little tutoring as they require. All ages and abilities are welcome.

Point to Line to shape to form – exploration and discovery 

Session 1

Drawing fundamentals – an explanation and some basic exercises to build confidence, understanding and enjoyment in working from the model.

Session 2

Linear drawing with quick poses towards a short-hand of expression.  Longer poses to develop a rigorous approach to proportion, measurement, shape-making and structure.

Session 3

Examining movement, weight, balance and tension and how to translate these into line drawings. 

Sessions 4 and 5

Local tone verses perceived tone – create form, space and light by departing from the linear and exploring ‘tonal’ values.

Session 6

Making your own mark – now through your own eyes. Using a variety of drawing materials we will build on the work of the previous sessions, towards a more personal translation of each pose.

You will see, through layered drawings, how each mark takes you to the next, confirming or denying the previous and so you will come to dissect and reconstruct the subject so that drawing becomes a tool for thinking.

During the course we will touch upon anatomy for artists, how to move from a drawing into a painting and multiple other aspects of this cornerstone of all art and design practice. I hope that it will not only reinvigorate your interest in drawing, but prove to be really good fun as well! 

About Toby Wiggins

Toby Wiggins studied at the Royal Academy Schools. He has exhibited widely including at the Royal Academy of Arts, Royal West of England Academy, National Portrait Gallery, Holburne Museum, Bath and The Jerwood Space.

Toby was elected a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2006. He won the Prince of Wales Drawing Award in 2005 and 2013, the Changing Faces Prize in 2006 and the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize for figurative painting in 2009.

In 2006, after winning the BP Travel Award, Toby made portraits of the rural community of Wessex, which were exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in 2007 and subsequently at Dorset County Museum in 2008.

Toby has been teaching drawing at the Arts University Bournemouth since 2004. From 2005-15, he continued the tradition of artistic practice in the Dorset studio of his friend and mentor the sculptor, Mary Spencer Watson (1913 – 2006), previously her father’s studio, the painter George Spencer Watson R.A. (1869 – 1934).

Materials list 

Please aim to bring as many of the following materials along with you so you have everything you need:

Range of pencils – 2B to 6B is a good range but you can use harder pencils if you wish.
An eraser
A sharpener or a sharpening knife
Charcoal sticks. Thin/Medium/large (whatever you have will be fine)
Cotton rags/tissues
Apron
Masking tape or bulldog clips for holding paper to drawing boards
Sketchbooks and paper (bring whatever you have, A1, A2, A3 cartridge paper – quality is not important. Expensive paper will be wasted, but if you have a desire to try different types of paper please do bring these along.