Last few weeks have been rollercoaster: I’m flat out in the studio, getting ready to teach an in-person life drawing workshop, and gearing up for the September Cohort.

I wanted to send a quick email to let you know that there are just 3 places left on the Cohort, and if you’ve been thinking about joining, time is now grab your place!

We start Monday 7th September, till Friday 3rd October

Click here to sign up:

👉 Drawing Life Cohort 3

This Cohort is going to be amazing! … You know I’d say that anyway, but I honestly saw such huge success and development on the last Cohort that I’m really excited to run this again. Plus many people who were on the last one have signed up again for September’s run, so that’s a massive endorsement. And also, also: the amazing, inspiring and uniquely talented Yuka Tanaka will be our model for the live drawing sessions, and that in itself is worth the price of entry in my opinion:

✨ Join the Cohort ✨

The focus for the Cohort is connection - how to develop connection to what you are drawing and to your process of drawing. Over 4 weeks, you’ll learn how connection works and how to develop this for your own practice. Here’s how each week will unfold:

Week One: Structure versus Anatomy
Drawing the structure of the human form in a dynamic and expressive way means understanding how movement flows through the body. This week focuses on exercises to explore and discover ways of drawing movement through the figure.

Week Two: Drawing the Feeling
Life drawing, or drawing anything from life, involves feeling and response. Two aspects of gesture drawing that can totally unlock your expression. In week two you’ll learn to connect with the feeling of a pose and how to express that in marks.

Week Three: Deep Observation
Learn how to attune your eye to shape and form, and breakdown the distinction between direct observation and assumed or symbolic shapes. This is the week where you’ll start to connect through senses to arrive at drawing.

Week Four: Building Your Process
Applying all the concepts and techniques from the previous week, this is when you’ll have the chance to work on longer, sustained studies with the live model. Developing your process is the single most important outcome, not just a drawing alone.

Each week has three live sessions at 2PM UTC:

• Mondays — 60 min lecture / presentation

• Wednesdays — 1hr / 2hr group drawing session

• Fridays — 90 min group feedback session

But, what if you can’t make those times?

Every session is recorded and posted straight into the community, so the timing genuinely won’t lock you out. If 2PM UTC lands in your workday, watch the replay that evening and you’ll still be completely part of it, because the real engine of this Cohort is the community that runs every day. People all over the world will be progressing alongside you through this four-week window, and I’m in the chat throughout: post your work whenever you can and I’ll be there to respond. You won’t be doing this alone, even if you’re drawing at 9pm your time.

I definitely think you should join me! This is the chance to gift yourself a month to focus on drawing, on developing your expression, and to be part of an amazing group of life drawing artists.

✨ Join the Cohort ✨

Any questions you got, just reply to this email.

Siobhan

Yuka Tanaka Collab ❤️‍🔥

I’m excited to share a quick update on the September Cohort... I’ve confirmed the amazing artist and life model Yuka Tanaka to pose for the drawing sessions.

The Cohort is a 4 week program, with 3 online sessions each week.
👉Every Monday we meet for a presentation of that week’s focus.
👉Each Wednesday is a drawing session where we get to draw together.
👉And on Fridays, we meet for a crit and feedback session on the work.

For at least 2 of the 4 drawing sessions, Yuka will join the group online to pose. This gives us an opportunity to work with a model and draw just as we would in a regular life drawing session. The poses will be timed, I’ll moderate and give instructions on how to approach each drawing.

Yuka is an amazing multidisciplinary artist and life model. She brings a depth of artistry to life drawing modeling that is really hard to find anywhere!! Check her instagram here.

She works with her partner David Hedderman out of their Berlin studio, offering life drawing sessions and workshops, as well as creating a really beautiful studio practice together. They are two of my favorite figurative artists, who I’ve followed for years, and it’s been a privilege to be able to join some of their online zoom calls. I’ve worked with Yuka both online and in person, and I am hugely excited that she has agreed to join us!

September Cohort shaping up to be fire!! 🔥
If you’re considering joining the link is here ->
https://www.drawinglife.io/offers/bLMMKxFg/checkout

I definitely think you should join me! This is the chance to gift yourself a month to focus on drawing, on developing your expression, and to be part of an amazing group of life drawing artists.

✨ Join the Cohort ✨

Any questions you got, just reply to this email.

Hope to see you in the Cohort!

Siobhan.

“Any day you get to put pencil to paper is a good day”.

I talked about this recently with one of the artists in my drawing group, because when it comes to drawing at least, it’s not always about making something perfect every time. Just because you make a bad drawing, does not mean it’s a bad day.

Obviously I’m always going to say that, since I believe process is more important than outcome. I get that it feels so very “short-change-y” to say that, when clearly we all want to make something close to the vision or feeling we have. Or, at the very least, to feel good about the work we made.

But, gentle reminder: life drawing is not really about making work. It is about developing a process. That’s why it’s never about making one drawing: it’s filled with short poses, long poses, different models, different sessions, different moods. In life drawing, every single pose is a new opportunity to unlock process even more.

One of the best comments I heard about life drawing this year is that it is about “working with your mark that day”

Because you’re not in the studio, you’re not in complete control, you can’t tailor the set up, zoom in on a photo, tear it up and start again 100 times…. it really helps to take a beat and just notice what mark is prominent. What mark are you unconsciously making, what mark is trying to come through.

Next time you’re at life drawing, even in the first few gesture poses, take a moment to stop drawing and notice what mark is happening. That’s a powerful guide to the process and can yield so much for you in terms of drawing. Follow that relentlessly.

The September Cohort is filling up!

If you’d like to take 4 weeks to focus on your drawing, work in a supportive group with me, and honestly transform your drawing in a short space of time…. This is your sign!! Come join me!! ❤️

We start Monday 7th September, till Friday 3rd October

Click here to sign up:

👉 Drawing Life Cohort 3

How it works

The Cohort lives in my community site, and this is where we hang out, post work, talk through the ideas and keep each other moving for the whole four weeks. There is a lot of support and engagement there on a daily basis. Each week has three live sessions at 2PM UTC:

• Mondays — 60 min lecture / presentation

• Wednesdays — 1hr / 2hr group drawing session

• Fridays — 90 min group feedback session

But, what if you can’t make those times?

Every session is recorded and posted straight into the community, so the timing genuinely won’t lock you out. If 2PM UTC lands in your workday, watch the replay that evening and you’ll still be completely part of it, because the real engine of this Cohort is the community that runs every day. People all over the world will be progressing alongside you through this four-week window, and I’m in the chat throughout: post your work whenever you can and I’ll be there to respond. You won’t be doing this alone, even if you’re drawing at 9pm your time.

If you have any questions, just hit reply to this email.

Here is some really wonderful feedback about the Cohort:

Siobhan knows how to see a persons art and her focus on the process is thrilling. I have worked on becoming an artist for many many years and find her approach to coaching and teaching the best available. I felt like her classes, lectures and demos were directed at me.

- T.J.

I heartily recommend Siobhan’s approach to drawing, her ability to convey difficult and abstract approaches and her warm enthusiasm and precise comments on everyone’s progress really created a positive group dynamic that was exceptional and heartwarming.

- Ellen

This was a fantastic course to be on. Siobhán is a super teacher and excellent facilitator in a group where some students are further along their artistic journey than others. You learn from her and other people on the course. She is always really encouraging, celebrating and noticing every detail, while giving constructive feedback. She brings the same expressive, liberating approach to teaching that she does to her drawings and allows space for others to do so too.

- Catherine

Siobhan is a great instructor—laid-back yet consistently delivers clear instruction and thoughtful feedback. She encouraged me to look closer at my subjects and helped me create more subtle, suggested marks in my work.
Being part of a community of artists and meeting regularly kept me accountable and made me create art consistently. The constructive criticism I received, along with learning from critiques of other artists’ work, was especially valuable. Highly recommend this cohort if you’re looking for structure, community, and real growth in your drawing practice.

- Leanie

Thank you so much for reading! Wishing you a wonderful week,

Siobhan

❤️

I’ve just wrapped the 4-week online Cohort with an amazing group of artists. It was so successful and empowering that I’ve decided to offer it again through the month of September.

This structured 4-week program will shift any blocks that you have in your drawing, and open doors to much more creative and expressive processes in your work. If you are going to regular life drawing sessions and feel that you’re stuck, this Cohort will help you immensely, and it can even transform your drawing.

Reflecting on the Work

The work that came out of this recent Cohort just blew me away. Not only was there a massive shift in everyone’s drawing from the first to the last, but the level of commitment and engagement was so inspiring to me that I am now 100000000% convinced that this process is the most valuable aspect of anyones’ drawing journey.

Above is an example of a before / after … David’s astonishing progress from his first drawing prior to the Cohort, to the drawing he achieved by week 4 of the program. It is beyond exciting to see this kind of work unlocked in such a short period of time.

The structure of this Cohort works.

This is one of the key takeaways for me. I’ve been teaching/intructing online for over 10 years now, and hands down this is the most successful structure I’ve experienced in terms of guiding students and achieving outcomes. A Cohort allows me to work with you directly and to provide a powerful group setting where people support each other and grow together.

It’s not a ded video course, it’s not a pre-recorded one-way street, it’s a dynamic and interactive learning environment.

It also provided the opportunity to work with a life model who joined us online and that in itself made all the difference in terms of applying the techniques and exercises.

Here are some amazing reviews about the Cohort:

Siobhan and her technique is simple and effective. Her videos and groups are the best thing I have found in many years of searching. She knows how to see a persons art and her focus on the process is thrilling. I have worked on becoming an artist for many many years and find her approach to coaching and teaching the best available. I felt like her classes, lectures and demos were directed at me. It is a phenomenal way to draw naturally with other artists of like minds. I hope she continues to offer cohorts and groups for a long time to come. I will happily sign on for the ride.

- T.J.

I heartily recommend Siobhans approach to drawing, her ability to convey difficult and abstract approaches and her warm enthusiasm and precise comments on everyones progress. Really created a positive group dynamic that was exceptional and heartwarming.

- Ellen

This was a fantastic course to be on. Siobhán is a super teacher and excellent facilitator in a group where some students are further along their artistic journey than others. You learn from her and other people on the course. She is always really encouraging, celebrating and noticing every detail, while giving constructive feedback. She brings the same expressive, liberating approach to teaching that she does to her drawings and allows space for others to do so too.

- Catherine

Join the September Cohort 🎉

We start Monday 7th September, till Friday 3rd October

Click here to sign up:

👉 Drawing Life Cohort 3

How it works

The Cohort lives in my community site, and this is where we hang out, post work, talk through the ideas and keep each other moving for the whole four weeks. There is a lot of support and engagement there on a daily basis. Each week has three live sessions at 2PM UTC:

• Mondays — 60 min lecture / presentation

• Wednesdays — 1hr / 2hr group drawing session

• Fridays — 90 min group feedback session

But, what if you can’t make those times?

Every session is recorded and posted straight into the community, so the timing genuinely won’t lock you out. If 2PM UTC lands in your workday, watch the replay that evening and you’ll still be completely part of it, because the real engine of this Cohort is the community that runs every day. People all over the world will be progressing alongside you through this four-week window, and I’m in the chat throughout: post your work whenever you can and I’ll be there to respond. You won’t be doing this alone, even if you’re drawing at 9pm your time.

✨ Join the Cohort ✨

If you have any questions, just hit reply to this email!

Thank you so much for reading, have a wonderful week

Siobhan

❤️

While I’m here I’ve managed to squeeze in some life drawing, and I’m also facilitating the Drawing Life Cohort which has been nothing short of amazing. I’m blown away by the quality of work, commitment and incredible progress from the group.
So proud! 🫶
I will share more about it once we wrap up, and also share more about my plans to run another Cohort in the future, because it has been so transformative.

In the meantime, I’m re-opening registrations for the Gesture Drawing Masterclass. 🥳

✨ Join Today ✨

This program is a great intro to the dynamic and expressive approach that I teach in all my courses. It’s a focused, intensive 4-week course along with weekly meet-ups online, and an engaged and supportive community inside the group.

If you attend life drawing regularly (and even if you don’t!) and you know that you want to access a more expressive, powerful and responsive way of capturing the pose of the figure, then this program will unlock that for you.

If you’re new here and don’t know what Gesture Drawing is:

To me, it’s a foundational and essential aspect of life drawing. Gesture is the key to drawing life, and from there all else follows.

It’s an approach and a technique that helps you to connect deeply with your own drawing process - your natural way to draw and to express - and it helps you to connect with the subject in a very immediate and direct way.

I know that you know…

There is so much MORE to drawing the figure than simply copying the physical aspects in a two-dimensional way: ie trying to make a drawing that matches a photo… Rather, and especially in life drawing, there is something present that is channeled through the physical aspects. This is something real, that can be drawn, and importantly is something that is worth drawing.

And the gesture can “represent” or express the figure (aka, the person) in just as profound and meaningful a way as a photo realistic, or “accurate” drawing of the anatomy can.

That’s what you’ll learn to unlock in the Gesture Drawing Masterclass, PLUS….

The side effect of learning gesture drawing is that you end up developing a deeply personal visual language that helps you to feel confident in your own expression. Honestly, is there anything more important than this?

“Sometimes the most realistic thing about an artwork is the way it makes you feel.”

I’d love you to join me in the group and start to explore these techniques

You can enroll in monthly installments or a one-time payment:

👉 3 x Monthly Installments

👉 One-Time Payment

✨ Join Today ✨

FAQs

Here are some very frequently asked questions, with my responses. If you have any other questions, just hit reply to this email.

Q: How much time does the course take each week? And how long do students have access to the videos and material?

The course materials are video lessons, divided into 4 modules so that each aspect of expressive and dynamic drawing can be broken down. You can watch these at any time that you want, and you have lifetime access to this course.

Most people find that working through 1 module per week is sufficient to really get to grips with the concepts and tackle the exercises. Many students re-vist the video lessons again after completing the course.

Q: How does feedback work inside the community?

When you post your assignments I will give you personalized and detailed feedback on each one. And each month of your membership there will be live workshops and group calls with me where we draw together. You’ll find that everyone in the community group is incredibly supportive and will give constructive feedback on each other’s work so peer feedback is very much a part of the experience.

Q: How long do students have access to the community forum?

You have 8 weeks of access to the community, and lifetime access to the course materials. If you’d like to continue with ongoing support and learning about figure drawing, there is an option after the 8 weeks to join the monthly membership tier, and details about that are posted within the community page.

In case you missed it, the focus in this 4-week Cohort is looking at connection in drawing: how to direct your connection and attention from what you see to what you draw.

How it works

The Cohort lives in my community site, and this is where we hang out, post work, talk through the ideas and keep each other moving for the whole four weeks. There is a lot of support and engagement there on a daily basis. Each week has three live sessions at 2PM UTC:

• Mondays — 60 min lecture / presentation

• Wednesdays — 1hr / 2hr group drawing session

• Fridays — 90 min group feedback session

But, what if you can’t make those times?

Every session is recorded and posted straight into the community, so the timing genuinely won’t lock you out. If 2PM UTC lands in your workday, watch the replay that evening and you’ll still be completely part of it, because the real engine of this Cohort is the community that runs every day. People all over the world will be progressing alongside you through this four-week window, and I’m in the chat throughout: post your work whenever you can and I’ll be there to respond. You won’t be doing this alone, even if you’re drawing at 9pm your time.

Why it matters

If you go to life drawing regularly and feel like you’re not quite improving, just making the same drawings each time (or even if you don’t go to life drawing!…), this Cohort will help you to break through blocks and start to feel free in your drawing. In my own practice connecting intentionally with whatever subject I’m drawing is the bridge between observation and expression.

Drawing for me is a life line, and it changed everything once I tapped into presence and connection. Almost no one teaches this aspect of drawing head-on, probably because it seems so “abstract”…. but this is exactly why I’ve wanted to focus on it and build a proper four-week framework around it.

The price is $250 for the full four weeks, and registration closes Friday 3rd July

→ Join us here: Drawing Life Cohort: Season 2
→ Or read the full details on the landing page, and just hit reply with any questions — I answer every one.

I’d love you to join me

Siobhan

We start Monday, 6th July until Friday 31st July.

The focus for this Cohort is: Connection

I feel extremely inspired to dig deep into this very under-explored aspect of life drawing, and of drawing in general, and to present it as a coherent framework over the course of a 4 week program.

Connection has come to the fore for me in the last months as being the absolute "key" within my own process. I always understood that what was happening when I draw can only be described as “connection”, but it wasn’t until recently that it felt like a moment of complete revelation to understand connection as the solid bridge between observation and expression.

It’s the one thing that is present - that has to be present - in both expressive gesture drawing and in focused and direct observation; and synthesizing both these aspects of drawing through an understanding of connection is potentially the shift that we all need in order to fully understand what it is we are doing when we draw. Learning how to tap into and harness ways to connect - both with the subject that you’re drawing and with your own process itself - will really help you to make your own figure drawings feel alive and dynamic.

So I’ve put together an intensive 4-week program to walk you through exactly what’s involved in expressive drawing and deep observation, and how these processes are fired by the feeling of connection and presence.

Cohort dates: Monday 6th - Friday 31st July

Each week of the Cohort will have 3 live sessions taking place online at 2PM UTC:

Mondays: lecture / presentation
Wednesdays: Group drawing session
Fridays: Group feedback session

Each session will be recorded and posted directly into the community, so if you miss a session you can watch the replay on your own time. The community site is where we will hang out, discuss insights, share work and explore the topics each day throughout the 4 weeks.

Weekly Schedule:

Here's the most exciting part:
For at least 2 of the drawing sessions we will have a live model to work with! She will join us in the group on Wednesdays and pose for the duration. This is a fantastic opportunity, because it will make all the difference from using just photo reference. Plus I’m so honored to have this particular model, she is phenomenal to work with and to draw.

If you are interested in joining me, here is the link to register:
Drawing Life Cohort: Season 2

Or if you’d like to read more detail, you can check out the landing page, or just hit reply to this email with any questions you have:
Drawing Life Cohort Landing Page

This is not another on-demand video course, it’s a live training where you and I get to work together. I hope you join me!

Wishing you a wonderful week,

Siobhan.

I’ve used optical aids like grids and projectors before, but I’ve never traced an image of the figure in order to “make a figure drawing” …but lately ads for these apps keep popping up on my feed, and increasingly a lot of these small scale, perfectly drawn figures are also popping up all over youtube and instagram. So I caved and decided to try it out.

As I said in my video, there are obvious benefits to using optical aids and obvious use cases for transferring a drawing or an image to the surface as an underdrawing. Obvious. There’s no doubt that much successful studio work is done with the help of photos, projectors and other means of composition and image placement. In the words of David Hockney, “The artist makes the marks, not the lens.”

But, personally, when it comes to the figure at least, I am interested in LIFE drawing. And so for me, that means finding a connection with the figure, with the model or with any subject that I am observing directly. It’s how drawing works, for me.

In our recent Book Club, we worked through “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”, and I learnt so much about the activity of observing when drawing. Betty Edwards’ book is not really a book about how to draw - it is in fact a book on how to observe. And that requires re-learning, or un-learning, because it’s about ways of seeing that are radically different to “copying”: ways that activate the creative, intuitive or instinctive part of your brain, in order to make choices and decisions. It’s what Nicolaïdes would call a “natural” way of drawing. And the amazing thing is that the kind of looking that Edwards unpacks in her book actually allows for accuracy, exactness and even photo-realism. But not by symbolizing, simplifying, deconstructing or tracing - rather, by connecting. Even the process of measuring and sighting, we discovered, is part of the right-brain mode of working, because throughout the process you stay completely connected to your subject while you measure.

Using that tracing app felt so utterly disorienting simply because I was unable to really connect with what I was drawing. I get that you can get used to that - but I also get that by doing so, you risk losing a freedom to improvise.

Through observation (and right brain activity) you have the possibility to access things that normally are not accessible, which is exactly why relying on observation rather than flat out tracing allows for something new to be expressed. And if not, at least something different, something that is unique to your perspective.

Announcement: Life Drawing Workshop!

If there is anyone who is local to me (Western Cape, South Africa) I am facilitating another life drawing workshop on the last weekend in August: Fri 28th to Sun 30th. If you are interested in the details please hit reply to this email and I’ll send you all the info!

I would so love you to join me 😀

Announcement: The Drawing Life Cohort 2

This August, I'm going to run a four-week cohort, which is a live online course with group drawing sessions and feedback sessions. This is the second cohort that I’ve offered, and the last one was hugely successful, so I’m very excited to do this again.

I’ll be working out the curriculum, the times, and all the details which I will share with you in the next few weeks, but I just wanted to let you know so you can keep it in mind.

R.I.P David Hockney

“A genius in every medium; an endlessly inventive artist, with a unique vision of the world” - Alex Farquharson, Tate Britain

I have a few books in my studio about and by David Hockney, one which I referenced just last week in my YT video - “Secret Knowledge”, all about the use of optical aids throughout history, and while I never really resonated with Hockney’s paintings (I’m more of a Bacon fan 😆), I find his drawings to be very compelling.

Hockney’s “Portraits and People” is a book that contains amazing drawings of the people in his life, throughout his life. And just as in this self-portrait above, if nothing else comes through in his mark it is that direct and unshakeable connection. Take a look at his drawings this week for inspiration. ❤️

Lastly, I made it to life drawing this past weekend (🥳). It’s always inspiring to draw with other artists and to get to draw from the live model. So, am sharing some of the drawings here.

ok. That’s it for now! Thank you so much for reading! I’m wishing you a wonderful week,

Siobhan.

The last few weeks have been spent in Ireland, hanging out in Dublin with friends and enjoying the stunning landscape around Sligo (Ireland’s best kept secret, 🤫).

I had fully intended to do LOADS of drawing and to catch up on some old life drawing sessions in Dublin that I used to go to (Thursday nights at Trinity College… anyone? 👀 ). But due to a lot of reasons, I didn’t get as much drawing in as I could have, and just enjoyed the city anyway.

And as expected, Dublin is in full bloom with bright sunshine and heaving crowds of tourists and locals up and down Grafton Street.

I did manage to drop into a life drawing session at The Model and re-connect with everyone there. One of the artists from that group was posing, and gave the most amazing poses and energy. The model is always the most important component in life drawing, and it’s always a privilege to be able to draw them from life. Even more so when they work intentionally with the energy of the room, and it feels like a very creative collaboration.

I will be back to regular dispatches from the coal face of my studio practice as of next week. Wishing you a wonderful week ahead!

Siobhan.

I’m not a painter, and generally I don’t like working with watercolor or paint when it comes to figure drawing. But I recently tried liquid charcoal and loved it!! In many ways it’s exactly like working with water color or ink …but to me it feels like there is a quality to the tone or mark that is entirely different.

I think this is the case mostly because liquid charcoal feels very grainy, and it creates layers of tone that I don’t ever seem to achieve with something like ink. Ink can feel very flat, and very graphic, whereas liquid charcoal has… DEPTH!!

The process I’ll share with you here is more or less the exact same process that I wrote about previously, drawing with ink, but in this instance I found that there was a tiny bit more leeway with liquid charcoal: it’s possible to re-activate a tonal area with water and sort of “move the marks around” slightly, even if you can’t erase them altogether. And, as already mentioned, if you build up the tonal marks gradually it creates a beautiful quality of depth to the marks. Plus I also found that drawing into the liquid charcoal, with a pencil, gave very interesting effects to the line work.

All of this to say that once again a drawing medium can take you through such creative pathways if you lean into, or even experiment with its particular qualities or aspects. “The medium is the message”!

We’re often told to focus on mark making, and to vary our marks as much as we can - all in the name of building up a drawing vocabulary. That sometimes doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when it comes to figure drawing, though, because there are not that many variations in tone or mark that you’d want to use when drawing the model. A line and a smudge can actually serve you quite well, in terms of describing form. But a subtle shift in that directive could be to think deeply about the drawing tool you are using and what it can offer you. That might open up marks for you in a more relevant way. So I’m just sharing this process here to show you some of the steps that I took in case you want to try this yourself. If you do - let me know.

First, as always, block in the gesture of the pose. That means the basic turn or twist through the pose. I usually focus on the torso for this kind of drawing - a standing pose - because that’s usually where the gesture is anchored. At this stage it’s just a block in, and yes some of these marks if “incorrect” will be part of the drawing by the end, and that’s up to you if that matters or not. But either way, keep the dilution really light and try to not draw details.

You can work progressively darker tones over the initial block in, and as you can see, this can give you really lovely, soft tones that allow previous marks to show through. Love that. There is not a huge amount of blending going on, so you could achieve really cool drawing with this approach alone.

Because I’m a drawer I had to grab a pencil at this stage, but you could easily resolve a drawing like this if you have more patience and control over your brush than I have - also it might help a this stage to use a smaller brush. I only had one size so that limited me when it came to adding finer details.

In the final stage I went back over some areas adding more water to work the liquid charcoal around and refine some of the areas.

I hope you found this helpful / interesting! This is for sure a medium I want to experiment with a lot more. Ive seen people making incredible landscape “paintings” with liquid charcoal and that looks like quite an involved process, so it’s next on my list. I will keep you posted.

Quick note before I sign off: Last couple of weeks to join the Gesture Drawing Masterclass! The doors are closing end of May, and I’m not sure if / when it will re-open.

You can enroll in monthly installments or a one-time payment:

👉 3 x Monthly Installments

👉 One-Time Payment

If you’re not sure what this Gesture Drawing Masterclass is all about, here’s a brief breakdown:

The Gesture Drawing Masterclass is:

• A 4-week in-depth curriculum of lessons and weekly assignments to unlock dynamic and expressive figure drawing.

• 8 weeks of access to the community forum, with daily feedback sessions, personalized critiques and assessments of your assignments, plus peer support and discussions.

• Live gesture drawing workshops, online within the community hub

You can read more about this offer here:

Or, if you have any questions, just hit reply to this email.

Thank you for reading! Wishing you a wonderful week,

Siobhan

If you’ve been considering joining this program, then I’d love you to do so now. To be honest I’m not sure when it will re-open. The plan is to take a bit of a break over the summer months, assess, and work on building a new course, so if you’re interested in Gesture Drawing …but you can’t join now, then let me know, and I’ll keep you in the loop about if and when it opens up again.

However, since this might very well be the last round of the program, I’m offering additional coaching for anyone who signs up:

2 x live workshops per month, plus a 1-1 call with me at anytime during the course.

You can enroll in monthly installments or a one-time payment:

👉 3 x Monthly Installments

👉 One-Time Payment

If you’re not sure what this Gesture Drawing Masterclass is all about, here’s a brief breakdown:

The Gesture Drawing Masterclass is:

A 4-week in-depth curriculum of lessons and weekly assignments to unlock dynamic and expressive figure drawing.

8 weeks of access to the community forum, with daily feedback sessions, personalized critiques and assessments of your assignments, plus peer support and discussions.

2 x live gesture drawing workshops, online within the community hub

PLUS

An extra 2 X group drawing sessions where we draw together, applying the techniques and approaches from the course

And a personalized 1-1 coaching call with you and me, to address your specific drawing development.

All in all, this program is a focused, deep dive into a transformative method of drawing the human figure, both from life and from photo. Beyond the basic techniques, this program also helps you to develop a unique, personal and deeply expressive approach to drawing anything.

I’m super proud of what this program is, and how it has developed thanks to the contributions of the incredible drawers and artists that have joined over the last 12 months.

Here are some amazing testimonials from students:

”I have just completed the last module of GDM! I cannot rate this highly enough. Siobhan is a brilliant at gesture life drawing. She invites you to experiment with new techniques which she has carefully scripted and demonstrated. She has an acute eye that picks up your strengths and encourages you to experiment with new approaches. The life drawing community of students that she has integrated into the course are very supportive and diverse and it’s interesting to have weekly assessments of your work with live online tutorials. I have been life drawing for many years and often felt that I was a bit stuck, Siobhan is the perfect antidote. Before you know it you can’t wait until your next life drawing session!

Thank you very much Siobhan for developing this creative and effective on line Drawing Life gesture classes.”

- Vanessa

“It is hard to describe how grateful I am to you for creating such a wonderful platform. I am so, so glad that I decided to join the class. I really enjoy the always thoughtful and well informed critiques that you have given me, and it is wonderful to read the feedback and observe the growth of the other members as well. There is such a great feeling of camaraderie! I look forward to every zoom meeting, and always feel inspired afterwards. I love that I know, FINALLY that I am getting exactly what I need in this moment in time to move my artwork forward, and I am beyond grateful.”

- Lois

“Gesture Drawing Masterclass is so much more than a drawing class. I have been introduced to the heartbeat of the figure drawing process and immersed in a community of supportive, fellow searchers. Siobhan has a natural gift for getting us out of our own heads and giving us the confidence to experiment, to see “mistakes” as growth, and to find our own voices as artists. Her knowledge of gesture and the drawings she manifests are incredible, but more importantly, she doesn’t use her own work as a template for her students. Rather, using the course materials, live sessions, and outside references, she’s able to keep the student grounded in a mindset which naturally produces individualistic results. The soul of art is found, nurtured through community, and thrives in the Gesture Drawing Masterclass.”

- Steve

I would really love you to join us and work together on developing your natural, instinctive and creative ability to draw. This is the exact approach that literally saved me all those years ago when I was lost and didn’t know how to express myself through drawing. If gesture drawing changed so much for me, imagine what it can do for you!! 😀

Let’s Gooooo !!

How to join the Gesture Drawing Masterclass:

You can enroll either in 3 monthly installments or a one-time payment:

👉 3 x Monthly Installments

👉 One-Time Payment

Any q’s? Just hit reply to this email.

Wishing you a wonderful week ❤️

In “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” one of the first exercises is contour drawing and actually, pure contour drawing is one of the most powerful exercises you can do to improve your ability to draw what you see.

As Edwards states, despite the fact that it does not “produce a “good” drawing (in student’s estimations), it is the best exercise for effectively and efficiently enabling students to later achieve good drawing.” - p86.

Laaaaterrrrrr…..

It helps you to make good drawings later… because what this exercise is doing in the moment, is improving your ability to see, not necessarily your ability to make marks, or to copy precisely. “Drawing is seeing” after all. And truly seeing as you draw is not just a visual thing, it’s a deeply felt experience which you can drop into, turn on, access whenever your analytical processes quieten down and your creative processes are allowed to take control and handle the task at hand, ie drawing.

Truly gifted drawers are able to achieve this level of direct observation while drawing incredibly accurate work. Their drawings are beautiful, not tangled, and not a mess lol😅
But for most of us, to develop our abilities, we must rather spend our time making incoherent, crazy looking and abstract drawings… because this is really training us to see.

However, I’ve found it’s important to also show people the value and beauty in these pure contour drawings, to point out how incredibly observed and therefore stunning their pure contour drawings are, in and of themselves. Usually people will not see their work as such, but a good contour drawing can be powerfully beautiful even if it is a tangled mess of lines.

Edwards explains:

“You have drawn complex edges from actual perceptions. These are not quick, abstract, symbolic representations... They are painstakingly accurate, excruciatingly intricate, entangled, descriptive and specific marks.” - p89.

As my life drawing teacher once said: a “good” drawing is one that is beautifully observed.

And, so within the mess of lines of a contour drawing, amid the mismatched proportions, scale and perspective, are lines that describe shapes in a very truthful way. This is direct drawing, there are no substitutions for shapes, no shorthands or simplified curves for complicated areas; no symbols and no assumptions. Each and every line is connected to the act of observing in a very pure way.

Try a few contour drawings next time you’re at life drawing or working from home. It’s a great way to drop into “drawing mode”

Thank you for reading! I hope you are having a great week!

After much consideration, and soul searching, I’ve finally decided on the next book for the Drawing Life Book Club!

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

I was hesitant to commit to this book simply because it is a lot to get through in terms of the exercises, and equally it is a very dense book to just read as a supportive text. I’ll be honest I struggled through this book the first time I got my hands on it and tried to teach myself how to draw. Everything in the book only clicked for me when I started Life Drawing, and in fact, I think that contour drawing as explained by Nicolaïdes encapsulates more or less a good portion of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

But then, recently, I saw a YT video that critiqued this book quite harshly - he was critical of the author, her explanations and her intentions, and the exercises themselves. So that decided me. We need to study this book!

I’m as passionate about the work Betty Edwards did for drawing as I am about Kimon Nicolaïdes’ legacy. Both authors broke drawing open as far as I’m concerned, and changed our understanding of drawing as being at best a preliminary skill before painting, or at worst a skill concerned with photocopying.

On the surface, Edwards IS teaching you how to draw exact, accurate and realistic images. But she does so through defining a process, rather than defining the outcome. Which is to say that she teaches you how and why a drawing can be called accurate, or realistic. This is something that most critics of the book miss, especially those who hyper-focus on whether or not there is a right side and a left side of the brain. And certainly, most academic drawers gloss over this aspect. Atelier training often develops perceptual skill through structured, analytical practice. Edwards isolates and teaches the perceptual shift itself directly, which is so powerful because it is based on experience not analysis.

For beginners, or anyone learning to draw, Edwards’ approach is nothing short of transformational. It unlocks drawing.

This is not a book that teaches you how to draw. This is a book that teaches you how to see.

Interested? Excited?? Want to Join Me!?… 😀

How the Book Club Will Work

In the past, the book club and study group were open to those on the monthly paid tier of this Newsletter, and we used the chat feature of Substack for discussion. In practice, it didn’t work as well as I had hoped.

So this season, I’m changing the format.

Instead of a series of emails with prompts and a weekly discussion, the Book Club will take place inside the Drawing Life Studio — the community space over at DrawingLife.io.

This allows us to work in a much more direct and connected way: through live sessions, shared drawings, and ongoing discussion and feedback throughout each week.

📣 We start Monday 6th April until Monday 10th of May

Here’s what’s included:

• 5 weekly live sessions (teaching + discussion + drawing)

• Access to the Drawing Life Studio for the duration of the Book Club

• The ability to post your work and receive feedback

• A clear weekly structure based on the book

Price: $65
Includes 1 month of access to the Drawing Life Studio, the monthly membership at Drawing Life.io
If you are a paid subscriber to this Newsletter, keep reading below for information on your access pass.

👇Here’s the link to sign up 👇
Drawing Life Book Club

Things to note:

Live sessions will take place every Thursday at 2pm CET (Central European Time) inside the community. You’ll receive a link to join, and it’s very straightforward to hop on.

Each session will focus on a specific section of the book, along with the related drawing assignments. There will also be time for Q&A.

If you can’t attend live, recordings will be available immediately afterwards inside the community.

Between sessions, you’re encouraged to post your work in the assignments channel, where you can receive feedback and engage with others. It’s a supportive space, and a big part of the experience is learning through shared process.

This Book Club will be different.

We’re not going to move through the book from beginning to end. Instead, the 5 weeks will break down the 5 perceptual skills that Edwards presents, and focus on an intensive exploration of these skills as they relate to drawing.

The aim is to unlock what the book is really trying to teach and apply it directly to your own way of seeing and working.

I hope you’ll join me! 😊
Any questions at all - just hit reply to this email and let me know!

Drawing Life Book Club

❤️

Read more

So, we’ve all been there - it can feel really disconnected (and disconcerting) when you are at life drawing and just having a bad drawing day. And obviously, of course, I’m also going to say that it’s actually (an important) part of the process!

I’m duty bound to say, yes, it doesn’t feel great, but that it actually really is ok. You don’t always have to make great drawings all the time. It’s about the process, not the outcome etc., etc… 😆

There are however, a few techniques that can pull you back into presence if you are feeling stuck or frustrated at life drawing. One trick that works really well for me is to draw with my other hand - it takes such an enormous amount of concentration and right brain effort that a 30 min pose will seem to go by in seconds, and the drawing clicks in after that. Another tip which I love is to “work with your mark” - meaning, to notice what mark is coming out in your work: be aware of the way you are drawing (even if you’re feeling frustrated and unable to draw), and then intentionally work with that. That can really release a lot of the expectation for a “better” drawings to come through, and open the door to the unexpected.

Every chance to draw the model from life is a privilege, and access to that isn’t always a given. I’ve gone significant periods of time without being able to attend regular drawing sessions, so now I am very aware that it’s an opportunity not to be taken for granted.

And, by the time I had packed up to leave life drawing on Saturday, I honestly felt very supported and inspired by just being there, and in the end, very glad I went.

Also.. I somehow managed to cobble together some content for a YT video, aimed at beginners to life drawing, so please check it out if you are interested in starting life drawing and not sure what you need to bring, or what to expect.

Thank you so much for reading this!

Wishing you a wonderful week,

Siobhan.

But the problem for figure drawing artists, and anyone going to life drawing is that it’s all very well to talk about a “drawing language”, when what you’re faced with is having to draw what you see. And what you see is the near-definition of a representational, literal, visual subject. The Body!

But, the human figure is also the perfect subject to explore this idea of capturing something that is present, beyond what it simply looks like. Especially in Life Drawing. And I think this is why practicing to draw something so “representational” in a loose and intuitive way can actually help to unlock ways of expression that you might not discover if you were only ever tied to describing the visual aspect alone.

The crucial difference between focusing on making a photo likeness of a subject, versus making a responsive and intuitive likeness of a subject is the process. In a loose drawing, you can allow yourself to be much more interested in shape, line, edge and much more focused on exploring with a curious and intensely engaged way of looking. This is a rigorous training in itself, and can teach you how to actually see “correctly” - and it is very powerful because it develops observation as a global skill that encompasses experience, feeling and intuition.

Whereas working towards a strict photo likeness in drawing, and not allowing response or feeling in, tends to demand that you analyze every line in comparison to the photo reference, with respect to that line being “right” compared to the photo, or “wrong” compared to the photo.

This whole topic is something that I’ll dive into in future dispatches because there is so much to unpack here. In the next few weeks, I’ll be offering a 4-week Drawing Life Cohort if anyone is interested in developing a dynamic and expressive approach to drawing the figure. So, stay tuned for all the details about that next week.

In the meantime, I posted a video here of 2 drawings that were made with a loose and exploring line, so please check this out if you have time:
How to Draw the Figure with Loose Lines

And while on the subject of YT videos… something completely different:

Any animators here?? 👀
I recently worked on a commission for Procreate for the launch of their updated Procreate Dreams app, and Skillshare just published an interview with me about the project. Please check it out if you are interested in animation, especially if you want to learn how to use Procreate Dreams for your work. And let me know if you have any questions!
The Story of Jessie
(yes… of course…I made an animation about my dog! 😂)

Wishing you a wonderful week

Siobhan

There is such a thing though, as a sustained gesture - a drawing where the approach is to work with gesture, in mark and feeling, for a longer time frame than the 1 minute or 2 minutes normally allotted to the practice. And in this case, it’s definitely important to start light, to maintain a light mark for as long you can, and to try to keep your focus on the movement and rhythm that you see in the figure for the entire drawing, instead of the anatomy or details.

But there is also a way to start a drawing with a gesture and then work into that with a more careful and considered intention. In this case, it’s like using the gesture drawing as a foundation, or under drawing.

My very basic, simple process to work this way is to:

1. First, start out finding the pose through an immediate, responsive gesture drawing. Working with a very light, fast and dynamic line - searching rather than defining. No measuring, no conceptual boxes or ovals; no plumb lines and grids. Just feeling and response as an intuitive map of the pose.

   

2. Then, refine that. Work back around that gesture revisiting the areas that need emphasis or areas where you feel the drawing is “right” or “in place”. This can be done with the same searching, loose and explorative line with which the initial gesture was made.

   

3. Then, switch gears and slow down completely. Using a slower line, like a contour line, you can study edges and shapes around the pose and this works really well to contain the exploration of the initial phase of the drawing.

   

4. Finally, you can consider shadows and render the forms that have been established so far. Shading is crucial to explain the form, but can be problematic if over-rendered, so leaving it to the end is, for me anyway, a better idea than blocking them in too early.

   

This process works for me because over the length of time of any drawing session, my ability to see what’s there changes. And as a result, the drawing itself shifts and changes. With this process, nothing is locked in from the outset the way it might be if I were focusing on construction and conceptualization in order to build up the drawing. Things can change and move, and the response remains fluid and adaptable. From the beginning there is an authentic record of observation, experience and mark making that remains present at the end.

I hope this was helpful! If you’d like to see the full process of this drawing, you can catch up with the video over on YT →
🎥 Gesture to Form in One Drawing

Wishing you a wonderful week,

Siobhan.

My obsession with charcoal powder continues.

Last week I posted a video over on Youtube sharing a quick process of a figure study using charcoal powder as a starting point, if you haven’t seen it yet you can catch up here: Expressive Figure Drawing with Charcoal Powder

The thing I love about this medium the most is that it creates marks I would never be able to achieve normally. It creates accidents, mishaps and mistakes which, when embraced, can become part of the drawing and even make it more beautiful. Like everything in life, being in a mode of acceptance can lead to profound discoveries more often, or at least in more interesting ways, than if we decide before we set out that there is just one path, or one way to new worlds.

My favorite drawings are always ones where I know it’s a drawing. Where I can see the hand of the artist making lines, cross hatching, searching, making choices on what to render and what to leave unsaid.

Not only is there more to read in the drawing and more entry points for engagement and interpretation; more opportunities to find my own personal resonance with the work…. but seeing marks and seeing raw, drawn elements reveals a deeper truth: there is for me the feeling that the drawing is it’s own thing, and not merely a copy of something else.

If there was just one way to draw the figure perfectly then we would all have had to put our pencils down long ago. There are lots of ways to engage with the figure as a subject, and the process of working with experimental mediums is very much like having a map, but then discovering new pathways, or new roads to go down.

I think the more I draw the figure, the more I am interested in intuitive or responsive drawing as a doorway for making figurative work. Allowing for mistakes instead of erasing them out can connect you to a deeper process than just making an image, and possibly help you to tune into a state of being clear sighted, one in which you will make profound discoveries!

Wishing you a wonderful week

Siobhan
❤️

I was recently invited to participate in a group show titled “Portrait Re -Imagined”, alongside some incredible artists. The curator told me half jokingly that since most of the other participants were very conceptual in their practice she wanted to include a figurative artist as balance. To which I immediately thought - oh you don’t think figurative artists can be conceptual. Challenge accepted. 😂

Thoughts About Figuration

I’ve been noticing that lately, in the last few years, there has been a shift in the subject matter of contemporary art. A massive shift - towards figuration. With this shift back towards representing the figure / the body / ourselves, and with the current imaging tools that can support hyper detailed, photo realistic work, there is an equally noticeable emphasis on “basic visual aspects”. And that has led to a loud insistence on the need to learn classical, academic and formal approaches before ever attempting to draw portraits or figures.

More interesting is that for some notable contemporary artists, this approach is used to hammer home the commonly accepted viewpoint that: “Western culture loses meaning when it is severed from its roots.”

Thoughts on My Process

Firstly, for me and my practice anyway, those roots feel broken. Secondly, those roots seem to have solidified into a set of rules that govern formal approaches to art - form, structure, and technique - that often suppress impulse, response, and instinct. The gesture is rarely allowed to be the final outcome, or the thing that is actually said by the work. Instead, only one aspect of experience is privileged.

So, I decided to make drawings based on classical Greco-Roman busts, as an entry into a discussion about inherited rules of portraiture in Western art. And what inheritance means in this tradition, in general.

I definitely don’t think we need formal training to create beautiful realism and accurate drawings. But in my work, I don’t often achieve that level at all. So, the drawings I made prioritized an experimental and instinctive process over the outcome, in order to arrive at classical form. I intentionally wanted to invoke archetypes - the Apollonian ideal, the heroic, the eternal, the beautiful. Not to adhere to legacy, but to reinvent a new vision of those archetypes through the act of drawing. Or, through the act of discovering the drawing. So, in a way it was the process that became completely abstracted: throwing charcoal powder onto the surface, using sandpaper as a drawing tool, erasing and wiping back carefully to find the image. Drawing only occurred at the very end, to create fine texture and cracks.

I also worked with materials that, for me, are anti-monumental. Charcoal powder and marble dust. Charcoal is a dynamic and expressive medium, and I love it for that. But also, it is likely the first medium we ever used to create, express and make sense of our world, long before we put rules on how we must express ourselves. I think of charcoal as dusty, ephemeral and unstable. A medium in tune with the flux and flow of life; a medium that resists the need to batten things down and make something stay one way forever. In fact, to come back to my starting point, if Western culture loses meaning when severed from its roots, I wonder…. aren’t our roots in charcoal though, not in marble?

Controlled Process vs Emergent Process

I was completely unsure of the work that was emerging, while I was making it, and unsure if I would show it, but at the same time, I felt total trust in the process and allowed that to lead me.

I think there is a way to create work that forces outcomes by strictly controlling the process and by strictly applying controlled rules. Sticking to established ways of doing things. Not letting the intended outcome out of your sight. Doing everything to pin it down.

But there is also a way to create work that allows the outcome itself to emerge by itself, by simply holding that process in your hands, using your reference as a starting point, and allowing something entirely new to come into being.

I’m sharing all of this simply to affirm my intention to champion a way (in drawing or otherwise) that is not bound by rules, but is freed by instinct. There are lots of ways to make work, and lots of other teachers offering valuable processes, but for me instinct is a powerful guide that will never steer you wrong. It allows you to discover your own process. Your own expression. Your own freedom. I am here to support you to uncover and develop your unique facility in that process.

Hope this post was helpful, thank you for reading!

Wishing you a wonderful week,
Siobhan
❤️

Generally, there are 2 main reasons stopping most people (certainly these are what stopped me from going for waaaay too long):
1. people have the idea that they are “not good enough” and that life drawing is full of exceptionally talented drawers, not beginners.
2). And / or people don’t know what they are supposed to do in life drawing, and think that you need to know anatomy first to be able to draw the figure.

Firstly, everyone is in the weeds. There might well be very experienced drawers alongside rank beginners, but in that moment everyone is battling!! 😂 Also, life drawing is the perfect training ground for anyone who thinks they can’t draw. It’s where I truly learnt to draw.

Secondly, in terms of what are you supposed to draw … well, it’s actually not anatomy. You can focus on that, but it’s more valuable to be able to focus on something slightly different. And that is: on how you observe the figure.

One thing I keep coming back to whenever I think about life drawing and what it means to me, is observation. I think the thing we are supposed to be doing in life drawing is using it as a place to practice observation, in a controlled and supportive environment. I also think that the fact that the subject we draw is the human figure and not a collection of objects, is very significant. For me, drawing the model is an opportunity to understand embodied presence and to learn how to react to that presence with lines and marks.

So, all in all that’s the practice. Learning to draw from direct observation, leaning into presence, and working with your mark.

Plus, the fact that you get to draw alongside other artists as well is a rare privilege. It’s transformative, and it opens you up to new ways of drawing simply by being around other amazing and talented people!

So make this the year you start. Go to life drawing, thank me later and let me know how you get on!!

Siobhan

❤️

Last week a massive fire tore through my local area. Farms and properties all around were severely damaged. One of the worst hit was an animal sanctuary that I’ve been involved with since its inception - Panthera Africa Big Cat Sanctuary. The sanctuary sustained a lot of infrastructure damage, many injuries to the big cats, and sadly one tiger succumbed to the terrible smoke conditions.

In an effort to support them, I’m fundraising through the Gesture Drawing Masterclass. I would love you to join me in helping them re-build the camps in their sanctuary, and to bring home the lions, tigers and leopards that had to be evacuated during the fire.

I’ve extended the 50% discount, now valid until the end of January, and if you opt to purchase, then 100% of the sales will go to Panthera Africa in your name.

What you will get:

👉 Lifetime access to the Gesture Drawing course

👉 8 week access to the Drawing Life online community

👉 Personalized feedback and support

👉 2 live drawing workshops on developing a dynamic and expressive approach

Plus!! I’ll also include a 1:1 call in your package as well so that we can meet online and talk together specifically about your drawings.

But mostly - what you’ll get is knowing that you’re helping one of the most amazing projects in South Africa working to protect wildlife.

Use this link to get the discount applied at checkout:
Gesture Drawing Masterclass.

A little bit about the sanctuary:

Panthera Africa was founded in 2015 in order to help and protect vulnerable wild life specifically big cats who face poaching, bone trade, illegal and canned hunting. The animals at the centre are all rescued from life threatening situations and given respectful care and a healthy life. The team at Panthera also works tirelessly to educate and spread the word about the ethical issues around wild life in Southern Africa.

Over the years I’ve supported them with logo design work, graphics and web development, so not only is it a project that I’m passionate about, but I feel part of the pride and consider the founders close friends and chosen family.

Here’s the link again to get the discount to the Gesture Drawing Masterclass, of which 100% will go to Panthera Africa:

If you would like to donate separately, then please do! Here is the link to donate directly via Panthera Africa website:
🦁 Donate - Panthera Africa

If you’re a South African resident and would like to join the Masterclass in this fundraiser, please email me separately (just reply to this email)