You will be able to book tickets from 9:30am on Monday 30th January.
Book here.
Lecturers: Susan Andrews and other lecturers to be announcedLocation: NAS Painting studios, upstairs Building 5
Where does an artist start? An idea, a place, a favourite object or form, materials, or a deeper question of how to engage, push, explore, investigate and research towards a project? How does an idea evolve? The beginning is to look, record, document and experience the act of drawing from something simple to the sustained engagement with a purposeful act of inquiry.
You can bring a form with you, raid the prop room or start with the vaguest notion of where to begin. The perception based development of sets of drawings, the use of notebooks, a collection of ‘materials’ will be the ground rules for developing your own project to take with you into the new year. Visual thinking, the ‘body’s’ intelligence to respond through drawing to any number of stimuli around you is where we will start.
References to artists’ research drawing (notebooks) and strategies for expanding the potential of ideas through drawing will be covered in discussion and through educational sources. This will give a context for historical and contemporary practice and will provide a direction for further background research.
Program:
Day 1 – discussion and selection of possible subject matter from what you have brought or what you may discover in the studio. A day for curiosity, focused looking and experiential engagement with form. Getting excited!!
This will be followed by suggested strategies and methodologies to explore the subject or form that you choose to work with. From here you will begin to develop sets and series of analytical and exploratory drawings. Materials, media and concepts will be discussed as you push this basic research.
Day 2-3 – An extension of your material as it begins on Day 1. Over the 4 days materials and media, artists, reading material, websites etc. with be discussed and explored that may help you extend your thinking and the development of your drawing process.
Day 4 – a group discussion and presentation of the work over the 4 days will see an overview of the process of developing ideas and their potential for more sustained engagement over time. What role research drawing plays in an artist’s work and how to use these investigations and understand what they offer, will be our conclusion…. or a beginning!
Materials to bring as you need them
• Sketch books and paper (try to find some samples of good quality paper that you can experiment with) – a range of sizes
• Ink, pencil, charcoal, watercolour, range of brushes and all the usual drawing materials
• Gesso or white paint.
• Glue
• Water containers
• Tape
• String
• Binoculars
• Dark glasses
• Magnifying glass
• Mirror
• Camera, phone or IPad
• Cutting board (heavy cardboard will do) and cutting blades
• Collage materials
• Any other ‘stuff’ you think you may need
We will have some materials and equipment available to supplement your own resources.
Resources:
Resources:
Check the references provided below to begin your own research before Drawing Week!
James Castle – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueqo1IxFgeU
Judy Watson – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTm_hcqGX30
Rachel Whiteread Drawing – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEpnkNdYQ_0
Dorothea Rockburne – https://www.dorothearockburne.com/#!video/c1m2g
John Virtue – https://vimeo.com/7202072
Michael Borremans – A Knife in the Eye – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhhUmwmlMtc
Lecturer: Susan Andrews studied Fine Arts at East Sydney TAFE (now NAS) before completing a Bachelor of Fine Art and Graduate Diploma in Professional Art Studies at City Art Institute in 1985 (now UNSW and Design) and MA Honours at University of Western Sydney Nepean in 1997. Andrews is a painter whose geometric artworks explore perceptions of spatial uncertainty through line, plane, colour and shape. Andrews has been exhibiting her work for over 25 years and has held numerous exhibitions in commercial and regional galleries and artist run spaces. Her work has also been exhibited in major curatorial exhibitions and art prizes. She has undertaken artist residencies in Paris (2000, 2006, 2016) Beijing (2008), Bundanon Trust (2005) and SNO Contemporary Art Projects (2015). Andrews currently holds the position of .5 Lecturer in Painting at the National Art School.
