Are you terrified of drawing and petrified of painting, but have a secret longing to learn such skills? Then enrol on this course where Richard will guide you through certain processes slowly, gently and step-by-step.

The course programme starts with your experimenting with particular methods of learning to see perceptually. Thereafter you will be able to record your observations in graphite pencils, coloured pencils and watercolours. To keep your terrors at bay, you will remain with the simple still life group for the duration course. Once you have learned certain principles and practices of drawing and painting, you will be able to attempt other subjects at home. If you follow Richard's 'recipes', you will be thrilled at what you can achieve.

This course is suitable for beginners.

Requirements For the drawing sessions:

• A drawing board or a 16" x 20" plywood or MDF off-cut
• A 2B graphite drawing pencil
• A pencil sharpener
• Four drawing board clips or bull-dog clips *
• A few sheets of A4 size white drawing / cartridge paper
• An eraser: Putty rubbers are excellent; they do not scuff the paper
• Six good quality coloured pencils. ‘Caran D’Ache Supracolor Soft Pencils’s are excellent and can be bought individually online. The following colours and code numbers are as follows: Yellow 010, Lemon Yellow 240, Ultramarine 140, Turquoise Blue 070, Vermillion 160, Carmine 080 *
• One apple, one orange, one onion and a very small bunch of grapes
• Two right angled corners cut from stiff card ( e.g. An empty cereal packet ) in the shape of the capital letter L approximately 8 inches in both directions and 1 inch wide (it is to become your viewfinder) *

Requirements for the painting sessions:

All the above plus:

• Another drawing board (N.B. it need to be unvarnished so that gummed paper strip can stick to it when stretching watercolour paper)
• A roll of gummed paper strip *
• A pad or a few sheets of watercolour paper (300grams) size A4 approx
• A watercolour paint box (preferably in ‘pans ‘or ‘half pans ‘ rather than tubes) that contains the same six colours (i.e. a purple-blue, a green-blue, a green-yellow, an orange yellow, an orange-red and a purple-red. Equivalent names could be ultramarine, cerulean blue, lemon-yellow, cadmium yellow or gamboge, scarlet and crimson). Bring also a tube of white gouache paint
• The palette (in the paint box) needs at least six indentations. Otherwise, bring another palette
• Two good quality paint brushes: sizes three and eight approximately. Pro Arte round brushes are excellent. A set of five can be bought online at reasonable price
• Two water pots
• Some tissues or a kitchen roll *

Materials Costs to Students

Requirement marked with an * means that Richard intends to supply a few spares for those of you who find difficulty in finding those items so long as he remembers to bring them!