By Lorna Jenkins
Raw Umber Studios is a non-profit organisation that runs art workshops in traditional and digital media. The studios’ tutors are classically-trained, professional artists.
As long as the coronavirus pandemic is affecting our daily lives, the London Road-based studios is running regular, free online portrait drawing sessions. There will be a chance to draw or paint from high resolution photographs at the same time every week (Sunday from 2pm – 3pm).
There are several ways you can work:
- If you just want the enjoyment of drawing for an hour by yourself then just tune in, put on some music and draw.
- If you’re stuck inside with your family, sit down with them at the kitchen table and draw together.
- If you’re a part of a regular drawing group, or the organiser of a life drawing meet-up that is currently on-hold, all tune in at 2pm on Sundays and then use Skype or Zoom to chat in a private group and share drawings while you draw. It’s a chance to keep those interactions up virtually until you can physically meet up together.
“Typically we’ll run three poses from the same model. We’ll start with a 30 minute pose, then 20 minutes, then 10. You can download the photographs and work from them at leisure after the session has finished,” Neil Davidson, from Raw Umber, explains.
I catch up with Neil on how he’s coping in this weird apocalyptic-style age we find ourselves in. “Obviously the business is suffering - we've cancelled classes and have refunded everybody's money - but we're in it for the long haul and we'll bounce back. Since we can't do physical sessions, we're going to be doing more online things. As well as the portrait sessions, we're commissioning various artists to do short (less than five minutes) how-to videos that we'll put on our YouTube channel. We'll be paying the artists, but we'll make the videos available free to watch - that seems like the right thing to do…”
Sounds like a plan! What made you decide to do the online classes?
“I usually go to a great life drawing class (Stroud Life Drawing, run by Keith Symonds) twice a week but obviously I can't do that any more. I chatted to a couple of students in the last Raw Umber workshop I ran and they were in the same boat with their own regular drawing classes, so I thought I'd but this together. I didn't want to do anything online that involved nudity, and portraiture is what I'm personally interested in more, which is why it's portraiture rather than life drawing. I ran it for the first time last week, and about 90 people watched it live from start to finish, so now that I've proven the concept I'm going to run it every Sunday, 2 - 3pm, while physical classes can't meet up.”
I’m in. How important is art and creativity right now?
“At one level, creativity and art are something of a luxury when people are struggling financially and physically, especially in the acute crisis we're facing. On the other hand, they bring a lot of relief and joy to people, so they're worth doing for that reason. Also, a lot of people in the arts sector, whether they're artists or not, will be among those struggling. By continuing to support them (by commissioning videos, for example, and promoting the work their doing) I'm hoping Raw Umber can help in a small way.”
What’s your top tip for people dipping their toe into the portrait palette?
“They say you've got a drawing age - the age at which your art teacher told you were hopeless, or that you should be doing something else. My drawing age until my late 30s was five, or maybe six. A few years ago I started drawing again from a book called 'Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards, which is great. I wouldn't say I'm a brilliant artist, but I've drawn more or less every day from then, and I'm better than I was when I started. My first tip is to realise that drawing is a skill that anybody can learn to draw with the right attitude and enough time. You might pick it up quickly, or - like me - slowly, but you can get there. My second tip is more practical. Start with the really big things you see. People often zone into drawing an eye, for example, but it's often easier to think about the shape of the head (is it more like an oval, or a triangle, or a square? Everybody's head is different). My third tip is to think of the patterns of light you can see, rather than think about what you're drawing. So rather than thinking 'I'm drawing an eye' which might lead you to draw how we're taught to draw eyes as children, as a kind of oval symbol with a circle for the iris and little lines for lashes, look to see the shapes of light and dark you can see. Lizet Dingemans, a regular Raw Umber tutor, is going to be doing a demo in the next portrait drawing session and she'll expand on some of these points then.”
What is the first thing you’ll do when we’re all allowed out again?
“I'll go and see my parents and spend time with them and other people I won't have seen for a while…”
Click here to visit and subscribe to the Raw Umber Studios YouTube channel and here for further information and to sign up to the mailing list. The artists who teach at Raw Umber are also happy to provide personal tuition – see their individual website for info.
Lorna Jenkins is an editor and freelance journalist from Stroud. She also paints and sells her work during Stroud Open Studios and in Made in Stroud. Instragram: @lornapaintsandwrites