Course Description

This 10-session class is a chance to learn and explore the figure in a series of terracotta sketches. Artists will experience a range of poses, body types, scales, and pose lengths: from 10-minute gesture sketches to a finished 8-hour figure sketch. You will practice the fundamentals of working in clay with hands-on instruction and demonstration from our instructors, learning the best techniques to build the figure without an armature with a variety of clay bodies. In the shortest sketches, you will learn the basics of sketching a figure in clay by considering gesture, structure, volume, and proportion. As the class progresses, we will prioritize speed and efficiency to create larger and more finished figures that are naturalistic while maintaining a dynamic freshness in mark making. By the end of the workshop, you will have a series of sketches of different scales and finishes that will be dried and fired by our instructors, in house.

The first sessions will be shorter sketches with frequent poses changes to learn the process of thinking and building volumetrically. Subsequent sessions will have a different model and pose each day, with students completing one-day sketches each session. The final sessions will be the same model and pose, with students dedicating the whole of the two sessions to a more finished or larger scale sketch.