The Royal Drawing School believes that drawing is for everyone.

Connect with our tutors and world-renowned drawing tuition wherever you are through our Digital Streaming Studio. Experience our varied range of exciting drawing sessions via live-streaming technology for an in-studio feel online. Broadcast live from the RDS studios, these digital sessions allow our tutors to utilise the life room in new, creative ways to develop unique drawing tuition with engaging perspectives, dynamic lighting setups and on-screen support only possible online.

With no need to commit to a whole day or a series of weeks you can drop-in to our tutor-guided one-hour lunchtime and two-hour evening drawing classes to support your art practice or studies, try out the RDS drawing experience, unwind, and expand your vocabulary of drawing skills and ideas using our specialist digital technology.

Our two-hour evening drawing sessions, broadcast live from the RDS studios, are an opportunity for students to experience the dynamic and dramatic possibilities of the life room from home. Join students online from across the globe to draw from epic sets, dancers, musicians and more, with something new each week. Using a range of drawing practices, our expert tutors will guide you through a series of exercises over the course of each session.

This six session pass will give you access to all of the epic evening sessions in the ```autumn term all at a 10% discount. Outlines of the sessions below.

Tuesday 7th November 18.30 - 20.30 - Portraiture

In this session we will draw inspiration from Sandro Botticelli’s Venus and Mars (on display at the National Gallery). Clara Drummond and Rachel Mercer will introduce techniques and approaches to capture expression and emotion in portraiture. The portraits within the painting will be recreated by our model, helping us examine action and attitude. By the end of the class participants will have combined their drawings to recreate a version the painting.

Materials

6 pieces of paper (A4 or A3)
2B pencil
rubber and sharpener
graphite stick ( or a soft chalk pastel in one colour)
coloured pencils or watercolour pencils.
water pot
brush for washes (size 8 or above)

Tuesday 14th November 18.30 - 20.30 - Notes from the Glasshouse

"We were all transfixed by the beauty of the delicate and unexpectedly large bloom. Open at last it was a curious flower and totally different to any I had painted before. Luckily the night was still and without a breath of wind”. Margaret Mee

Margaret Mee (1909 - 1988) spent many years for the chance to draw the elusive moonflower cactus. Working through the processes of artists who have worked from flowers, from Maria Sibylla Merian to Georgia O’Keefe and Karl Blossfeldt, in this session we will embrace the idea of the botanical night. There will be the opportunity to explore form and function of plants through close observation, and we will discuss reframing traditional botanical drawing and scientific work through untold stories.

Materials

Paper (A3 or larger)
Range of pencils
Eraser
Watercolour paint (or other medium you prefer to work in)

Tuesday 21st November 18.30 - 20.30 - The Figure in Colour

Tutor Mark Cazalet will focus on an important but frequently missed aspect of colour; the significance of our application of colour as a saturated or transparent surface, and the rich potential of mixing these two opposites visual effects as range of chromatic intensities. We will work in collaboration with a dynamic model, varied coloured settings and differing camera angles to stimulate our visual responses.

The evening will be broken into three practical segments:

Fully saturated colour; an experiment employing pure saturated colour with no tinting or shading mixtures.
Transparent colour layers applied with a range of techniques including using tissue layers.
Bringing the two approaches of pure saturated hues and transparent layers together.

Each section will introduce you to a range of visual references to illustrate the approach and a demonstration of the materials being used. We will start with a warmup section to get used to the processes and then a longer pose to develop them. There will be 5min breaks in between each. At the end of the third practical session there will be a longer pause to upload the imagery before we have an interactive group crit of examples of the drawings made.

Materials

White cartridge paper circa A3
Chalk or oil pastels - as full a range of colour as you can get/have
Clear tissue paper
PVA glue and an old bank or loyalty card as glue spreader.
If you have coloured inks there may be time to use these too as a subsidiary alternative

Tuesday 28th November 18.30 - 20.30 - Drawing the Unexpected.

Enter the world of the unexpected. The life room is transformed with a series of drawing exercises that will celebrate what a life drawing studio can be. Be prepared for movement, music, twisted narratives and creative use of combinations of media and techniques.

Materials

Charcoal
Graphite Stick
Drawing Pencils
Coloured Pencils
Pastels
Ink Pens
Conté Crayons
Putty and Hard Erasers
Pencil Sharpener
Sketchbook
Paper in various sizes – we suggest A3 – A1
A Drawing Board or large book to lean on

Tuesday 5th December 18.30 - 20.30 - Drawing a Christmas Story

Drawing inspiration from The Nutcracker this festive drawing session will explore the story through dance and music. Working from a live ballerina in the studio, the tutor will take students through a series of drawing exercises that will allow you to capture the expression of the story through movement, mood and narrative.

Expect joyful setups full of riotous colour, a strong narrative journey and an introduction to various drawing techniques and challenges. By the end of the class you will have a series of drawings to tell your own illustrated Nutcracker story.

Materials

Charcoal
Graphite Stick
Drawing Pencils
Coloured Pencils
Pastels
Ink Pens
Conté Crayons
Putty and Hard Erasers
Pencil Sharpener
Sketchbook
Paper in various sizes – we suggest A3 – A1
A Drawing Board or large book to lean on

Further details

All students will need a device that supports the latest version of Zoom
Chat support available during the session
These sessions are designed so that students can engage with whatever materials they have to hand: pencil, biro, crayons. Each sessions has a suggested material list that will allow you to get the most out of the classes.

Share your work on social media with the hashtag #RDSLivestreamStudio

Epic Evening Drawing | Royal Drawing School | 5 Session Pass