Classes & Residentials

Rediscover Your Creative Self: Experimental Mixed Media Drawing Course on Dartmoor

Whilst staying at an idyllic Dartmoor location we will use a variety of materials to unlock creativity and learn about drawing and painting. Drawing is our own unique response to the things we see and experience and the marks we all make are our very own. No two people really draw alike.

With this understanding we begin to let go of old fears and discover our artistic selves afresh. This course can cater for beginners, intermediaries and those who are immersed in art and fancy refreshing your practice. We can all learn from each other, as the creative process is an endless journey.

Bala Brook Drawing Retreat May 2022

Course Structure and costs

(Course Content below)

Tuesday 24^th May

Arrival @ 4pm.

Welcome to Bala Brook.  I will be there to meet you as you arrive and to show you to your rooms where you can unpack, make yourselves at home and rest.

@ 5pm: There will be tea/coffee and cake to welcome you, while you meet your fellow participants, then we can visit the studio and deposit any materials you wish to bring with you.  If you don’t have any that is fine as I will provide all materials.

@6.30pm:  Supper time

@8.30pm – 9.30pm : Talk on Drawing, looking at examples from other well known and lesser known artists

Weds 25^th May

@7.30am Yoga morning stretch (optional and pre booking required) 45mins

@8am Breakfast

@9.30am Meet at Shraddha Studio, begin course

@11am Tea break. Tea and coffee available to make at the studio or go back to main house

@11.30 Back to the studio

@1pm. Lunch followed by free time

@3pm return to Shraddha Studio. You are welcome to work on your pieces during the free time if you would like, I will be available.

@4pm tea break at Shraddha

@5pm Finish at Shraddha.  Free time, or go for a group walk (bring sketch books if you wish – provided). If you need more time to work on your pieces you are welcome to continue til supper time

@7pm  Supper and free time

Thursday 26^th May

@7.30am Yoga morning stretch (optional and pre booking required) 45mins

@8am Breakfast

@9.30am Meet at Shraddha Studio, course continues: Drawing the nude.  See notes on Course Structure

@11am Tea break. Tea and coffee available to make at the studio or go back to main house

@11.30 Back to the studio

@1pm. Lunch followed by free time

@3pm return to Shraddha Studio. You are welcome to work on your pieces during the free time if you would like.

@5pm Finish at Shraddha.  Free time, or go for a group walk (bring sketch books if you wish – provided)

@7pm  Supper

Friday 27^th May

@7.30am Yoga morning stretch (optional and pre booking required) 45mins

@8am Breakfast

@9.30am Meet at Shraddha Studio, Dependent on weather.  Go out and work in the landscape

@11am Tea break. Tea and coffee available to make at the studio

@11.30 Back to the studio

@1pm. Lunch followed by free time

@3pm return to Shraddha Studio. You are welcome to work on your pieces during the free time if you would like.

@5pm Finish at Shraddha.  Free time, or go for a group walk (bring sketch books if you wish – provided)

@7pm  Supper and

@ 9pm Film

Saturday 28^th May

@7.30am Yoga morning stretch (optional and pre booking required) 45mins

Strip beds and pack bags ready

@8.30am Breakfast

@9.15am Meet at Shraddha Studio,

@10.45am Tea break at Shraddha.

@11amTying up loose ends, Final sum up

@12.15pm Pack up

@12.45pm flapjacks and tea

@1pm. Departure

Prices:

Price differences due to comfort of room.  All the rooms are uncluttered, newly appointed comfortable rooms.

2 rooms at Shraddha (Kuti 1 and 2) are single monastic style rooms with a door onto the garden so you will have to go outside to the main entrance to Shraddha and the Bathroom and W/C, literally 30 seconds.

There are 4 rooms which share a bathroom and W/C

There are 5 rooms which have an ensuite Bathroom, one of them which is suitable for disabled, and can have an extra bed put up too.

For more info on bedrooms email me or scroll down for floor plan

There are 3 prices therefore for the 4-day course;

1. £625
2. £675
3. £775

Non-Participating companion £450 – Superb walks and cycling available

I reserve the rights to change the schedule according to the weather and what seems appropriate at the time.

To check out the accommodation click here:

To find out more about me, your tutor click here:

For more info on Woody’s Art Bites, click here:

To purchase a gift voucher click here:

To BOOK THE COURSE click here:

FLOOR PLANS

BBR-001-A-Ground-Floor-Plan-Simple-ColourBBR-002-A-First-Floor-Plan-Simple-ColourBBR-003-A-Shradda-Floor-Plan-Simple-Colour

Course Content

The aim of this course is to introduce you to many different mediums, giving you the time to experiment and the skills to improve whatever skill level you are at.  We will use drawing and painting alongside collage.  We will look at other, older materials like egg tempera finding modern ways of using it and talk about the use of gilding within your work.

We will look at colour and line, tone and shading.  Life drawing will anchor our drawing skills and comprehension of form. Going out into the landscape we can learn to take quick and exciting sketches which we bring back to the studio.  Here we can combine our life drawings and preliminary sketches to create something new.

I am kind and fun loving, and want you to have an enjoyable time with me, so I focus on making you relax and lose your inhibitions.  You will discover your artistic self afresh, and return home with a new outlook

Drawing Contemporary Dance

In the Great Hall at Dartington Hall

At this beautiful location you can immerse yourself in this cutting edge 4 day course on Drawing Contemporary Dance. With me Isabel Coulton and dancer, Anders Duckworth. Together we will guide you in this exciting and innovative mark making experience, where you can discover the fun of creativity @dartingtonarts @andersduckworth

How do you draw movement? How would one describe action? What do you learn when looking at the moving body?

Come to this fantastic cutting edge course to find out. We work with our own movement, (nothing to complicated), watching a contemporary dancer, Anders Duckworth, listening to music and accessing deep feeling to create marks like you’ve never done before. *An immersive experience not to be missed*

Tickets

www.dartington.org/event/drawing-contemporary-dance 

DARTINGTON ARTS:  In this exciting and ground breaking course, you’ll spend a week dancing and drawing in our historic Great Hall with artist and life drawing tutor Isabel Coulton, and contemporary dancer Anders Duckworth.

Dance is a movement that runs through Dartington’s history. This rural paradise has been a point of intersection for a complex interweaving of dancers and dance styles – including Pina Bausch, Margaret Barr, Rosemary Butcher, Mary Fulkerson, Kurt Jooss, Rudolf Laban, Sigurd Leeder, Steve Paxton, Louise Soelberg, and Lisa Ullman.

Dartington’s College of Art, the spirit of which lives on today through our Arts School postgraduate programme, was also home to artists like George Passmore (of Gilbert and George), Ben Nicholson and Mark Tobey.

Food and drink
On this course, dinner will be provided on Monday, and lunch on Tuesday-Friday. These communal meals are a vital part of the learning experience and we strongly recommend you attend them.

Tea and coffee will be available throughout the course.

Residential option
We recommend that if possible, you stay on-site during your course. All our courses are best experienced holistically: through working, relaxing, eating and staying with other course participants and tutors.

Our beautiful rooms have all the character and personality you’d expect, but not at the expense of comfort. With easy access to our wider estate, they are the perfect place to relax and recharge.

Breakfast and dinner each day – made with fresh, locally-sourced produce by our award-winning team – are included: one less thing to worry about during your stay.

Choose this option by selecting ‘residential’ at checkout (head to ‘Book now’, below). Please note:

• Accommodation is available at a discounted rate for course attendees.
  – For this course, you must book for four nights, arriving on Monday 2 and departing on Friday 6 November.
  – Breakfast and dinner are included from Tuesday-Thursday and breakfast on Friday morning. (Dinner on Monday is a communal experience and part of the course fee – see above.)
  – Check-in for all rooms is from 3pm on the day of arrival
  – Check-out for all departures is 11am on the day of departure
  – Accommodation is booked on a first come, first served basis only

If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to contact me either by messenger or email at info@isabelcoulton.com. I am a great facilitator and this course is not restricted to experienced artists. This immersive class will coax the enjoyment of creativity out of anyone, and through new experiments you will learn age old truths

Residential Life-drawing holiday

in Provence, France with Isabel Coulton,

 12th – 20th May 2021

8 Nights Full board, all materials included.
One evening wine tasting
Walk with picnic and drawing in the mountains

Prices £1800 non-participatory family members, £1000

Rooms available: Covid measures in place.  Twin rooms will be single occupancy unless with a family member. Sanitisers and masks provided.

3 Double bedrooms, 1 en suite

1 single room

3 twin rooms

TO BOOK click the link below and email me.  Payments are in 4 stages:

On booking £500 deposit required. Fully re-fundable if I cancel the course.  £300 non- re-fundable if you change your mind.

Second payment due, £500 on 1st Dec 2020,  Third payment due, 1st Feb 2021 £400, Final payment £400 on 1st April 2021  Contact me for alternatives.

BOOK HERE

Half my heart resides in Provence, home of my ancestors. Having taught life-drawing for around 10 years now in Devon, I have a burning desire to give classes in my French home town of Camaret-Sur-Aigues.  My first residential happened in Sept 2019 and was a roaring success.

Situated on the Rhône valley plains near the historic town of Orange – about 30 mins north by car from Avignon, Camaret is an ancient, small, walled Provençal village as yet unspoilt by development.

La Bastide is a most beautiful chateau or ‘manoir’ – an elegant 18^th century country house with 2 hectares of gardens. It boasts a lovely pool, plane trees all around, a Ping-Pong room, and ample room to play pétanque and eat outside. We can draw inside and outside in perfect peace.

Drawing the human figure is really the cornerstone for all applied art practices. However it doesn’t have to be the painful and terrifying experience it used to be. We are all artistic, and express ourselves in a wonderful diversity of ways – as varied as there are human beings on this beautiful planet of ours.

My approach to teaching life-drawing is not to follow a dogged routine of laws, but to acquaint people with ways of looking and seeing to shed the shackles of fear that restrict our real enjoyment of making marks. Fear has never been a good instructor, whereas true enjoyment and interest in the process of sketching, coupled with lots of brain evading exercises and plenty of practice, is sure to bring increased understanding of the things we draw, which in turn brings ‘progress’. More information to follow on the structure and tuition of the week.

Drawing is a mindful/mindless exercise. It is something which can take me to deep pools of bliss, as well as those moments of struggle which actually produce the best results. This holiday will offer a daily yoga morning routine and a short end of the day stretch. Shiatsu massage, an ancient Japanese practice that encourages wellbeing, will be an added option.

I am offering a full board holiday. Breakfast, lunch and supper included with wine from the region, cooked by a Provençal chef, Marie Noele. We will have a trip out to Vaison-La-Romaine, and as the name suggests

it is famous for its rich Roman ruins, medieval town and cathedral. What makes Vaison-la-Romaine unique is the possibility to see the antique, medieval and modern towns within the same environment – 2000 years of history. With four theatres, numerous exhibitions and galleries, Vaison-la-Romaine is also renowned for its art scene.

Also planned is an early evening wine tasting, in house, before a sumptuous supper at La Bastide.

The Roman museum in Vaison has many beautiful sculptures and artefacts to see, and one can walk through the Roman streets, and see the plan of how they were laid out, some columns and sculptures still existing, municipal toilets and other interesting sights.

Vaison hosts one of the best restaurants in the old town that I have ever found anywhere and is very reasonably priced…we shall have to have an evening meal there, although I’m afraid that won’t be included in the package, and it is of course optional.

If the weather is clement, we can take a picnic and go into the Dentelles de Montmirail to draw the landscape. This is where the famous Côte du Rhône Gigondas wine comes from and the lace like mountains, covered in pines are a lovely place for a walk, offering extensive views of the vine-covered plains below. They form the foothills of Provence’s highest peak Le Mont Ventoux, 1909m, where cyclists the world over come to compete in the Tour de France.