Emily Ball
Sat 11th - Sun 12th May
£305
The Woodland Weave
Making large drawings inspired by being in the Woods
This 2 day course is all about how to make expressive and atmospheric drawings that capture the feeling of being in the woods near the Lund Studio. Starting with a walk in the woods on day 1 students will go out armed with paper and a limted, easily portable, selection of drawings tools. Emily will demonstrate how to create a rich weave of marks and layers working with charcoal, pencils, chalks and oil pastels. These marks will begin the journey of capturing the tangle of growth in the trees and undergrowth, the light, spaces and sound of bird song. Smudges, scribbles, lines, finger prints, embedded, excavated, buried, phrased, scattered all dance together to find a visual language to descibe the magic of being outside where all our senses are stimulated.
Back in the studio/barn these drawings will be used as inspiration to make large scale work on paper. Expanding our materials to include black Indian ink and white acrylic the drawings can be layered to gain a depth that is perhaps only hinted at in the small drawings made on location.
NOTE - to enable us to work big, this course will be taking place in our large open sided barn. Sheltered but not heated.
Lunches and refreshments included. Days run from 10am to 4pm (ish).
About Emily
She is a painter, tutor and author. She strives to be a poet in paint, pushing further into the expressive possibilities of translating sensation and experience into a painted visual language. She has been teaching for over 30 years and loves to create a space where artists can be focused and fearless as they explore and gain the confidence to find their personal language in paint.
She graduated from Exeter College of Art in 1989 with a BA in Fine Art Painting and completed her MA in painting from The Surrey Institute of Art & Design, Farnham in 1999. She has exhibited at the RA Summer Exhibition and was a prize winner at the National Open Art Exhibition. In 2009 she published her first book ‘Drawing and Painting People – A Fresh Approach (reviewed by Matthew Collings). In 2012 her second book was published 'Emily Ball – Painting'.
She is director of her Painting School 'Emily Ball at Seawhite' and also travels nationally and internationally to teach painting courses. In 2019 she was invited on a cultural exchange to China, with 7 other British Artists, where she made paintings and was given the opportunity to explore Chinese culture, landscape and painting. In 2021 her drawing 'Self Portrait as a 'Confident Woman' was selected and toured in the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize exhibition.
Currently she is working on a new body of work called 'Longing and Sweet Sadness' which explores her connection to her childhood home, memories and the feeling of being in the woods behind her parents house.
“As I paint and draw I am not searching to paint the view but instead exploring a language in paint that could give visual metaphors for the beauty, impermanence and rawness of Nature. I am reminded that all my senses are vital to inform my response; the movement of my body as I walk, the smell and feel of the earth under my feet. The sound of birdsong, the discomfort of working outside, the quiet space for reverie. I cluster marks, distress, mop, edit, knot, caress and balance between order and chaos in each painting. Each time it brings my attention to the particular; gentle paper clatter of leaves falling, piercing slats of amber light; luminous, looming, dimming, fading, draining away. The sap falling and rising, sleeping and waking; revealing the bare bones of the woodland weave.”
www.emilyball.net
www.emilyballatseawhite.co.uk
@emilyballpainting
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