Online & In-Person Workshops
Movement, Marks and Meditation online workshop
Monday March 23rd (and then monthly April 23rd - May 21st - June 18th, 2026)
5 pm - 7:30 pm
Online
Price: £30 each or all 4 workshops for £100
A series of monthly experimental taster workshops led by Marina Tsartsara (Somatic Arts Practice) and myself (Drawing and Meditation) bringing together our combined experiences and love for drawing with, and through, awareness of the body.
Marina’s approach to drawing is very close to mine, which is why we want to work together. While she comes from a dance and performance background, and I am from a visual art drawing background, we both approach drawing in the same way - as a sensory, physical, tactile and emotional experience - which can be further explored through movement, meditation, and the gestural mark. For example, if making drawings about the breath, Marina might start with more bodily references, to the anatomy and the physical structure of the lungs, while I might lead a meditation focusing on the breath itself, and as a mark - both of us would encourage expressive, emotional as well as physical drawings to emerge.
Marina leads from her own Somatic Art Practice® - “an embodied artmaking practice that explores the relationship between the psychophysical experience of corporeal structures & artistic gesture.” I too focus very much on the body and the senses as a vital part of the drawing process, using meditation as the starting point, to come into presence. Drawing from full awareness, whether from inside the body or from what is in the space around us.
Together our teachings mirror and weave, offering similar approaches with our own personal differences of touch, of voice, of everyday life and creative life experiences. Together we aim to bring you a drawing workshop that offers an inspirational and meaningful way to engage with the body, art and creativity.
Drawing for All - Refresher Course for anyone needing a guided, practical boost
COMING SOON - NEW DATES to be announced
A series of four x 3 hour workshops which will be available LIVE online and as RECORDINGS
Price: £150
A 4 part practical guide to drawing, suitable for anyone wanting to refresh and brush up on their drawing skills, including beginners. This course will consist of drawing workshops where the emphasis is on drawing - materials, processes, techniques to apply to everyday familiar subjects. You can join in the live sessions and/or watch the recordings to follow along at your own pace. The recordings will be available for at least one year.
Module 1: Drawing objects and still life - exploring materials and approaches, from pure observation to more expressive ways of drawing as a way of loosing up and getting over the feeling of “I can’t draw!”
Module 2: Drawing perspective - understanding the basic principles, looking at boxes on our table, and applying the same rules to streets and buildings
Module 3: Drawing organic forms - be inspired by the beauty of natural forms like shells, flowers and trees, looking for patterns and principles of organic growth
Module 4: Drawing organic forms - inspired by the human body and the landscape - gestural, sculptural, lyrical line
This course helps build confidence and experience when using different materials for different subjects, whether drawing in line, tone or describing textures. You will have time to practice and refresh your understanding of materials and techniques in the live sessions, and will be encouraged to ask questions and discuss challenges (you can be assured that any question you might have will be one that someone else is thinking of asking - there is so much to learn from sharing and listening to other people’s experiences). After each session you will be equipped with exercises to practice in between sessions - giving you the confidence to keep drawing. You will be encouraged to look at your work without judgment. I truly believe everyone can draw.
Embodied Drawing
Thursday 26 March - Friday 27 March
9.30 am - 4.30 pm
In-Person in Emily Ball at Seawhite (Star Trading Estate, Partridge Green, RH13 8RY, UK)
Price: £225 (all materials are included)
An experimental 2 day drawing course embracing the physicality of drawing on a large scale - using your own body, gesture and sensation as your subject. Using the generous space of the Seawhite studio there is almost no limit as to how large you can go.
This course is for anyone wishing to expand their drawing practice and find new limits, beyond the scale of your average drawing, by working large, freely, involving body and breath. You will be your own model, working on 2 or 3 large sale drawings, guided by Katie’s exercises and meditation. She will encourage you to experiment, layer, develop and change the drawings over the course of 2 days.
Imagine shutting your eyes, and drawing yourself from the inside out. What does it feel like to be standing here, like this, breathing, still, steady; and now, on one leg, wobbling, stretching out to the top of the page, then crouching, curled into a tight ball, charcoal crunching underfoot? Working intuitively, drawing can be like a dance; full of movement, breath, weight, balance, repetition, grace, or imbalance and clumsiness.
By connecting the process of drawing to our own physicality, we can harness directly the power and sensations of the body to create marks; to fill space, to rub out, to scratch the surface, make our mark, to press into, walk through, push, pull, fight, or dance with, find harmony or discord, create movement or find stillness.
On day 2 you might cut up the large drawings, rub out, paint over, start again with collage, using the fragments to make smaller work. The outcome is perhaps not as important as the process. However, the results may surprise and inspire you in your approach to drawing and painting beyond the course, helping you to discover a fresh way of working from the figure, reinventing your visual response to the physical body.
Artists you can refer to include: Rebecca Horn, Lee Krasner, De Kooning, Jenny Saville, Matisse and Alice Kettle. Squeak Carnwarth, Vivien Suter, Rebecca Salter, Emily Ball, Eva Hesse, Gary Wragg, Cy Twombly, Rachel Whiteread, Jessica Stockholder, Joan Mitchel, Helken Frakenthaler.
Coming To Your Senses
Friday 1 May - Saturday 2 May
10 am - 4 pm
In-Person in Emerson College, Forest Row, East Sussex, RH18 5JX, England
Price: £395
Fill a sketchbook or two. Be inspired by the beautiful surroundings of the Red Studio at Emerson College, where the only sound that can be heard is birdsong. Open your eyes and your ears to what is around you, smell the flowers, and feel the sun on your face, the ground under your feet. Drawing not only from observation but from all the senses, this course will encourage you to experiment with different approaches to drawing, and play with your materials.
You will be guided by Katie’s unique approach to drawing, combining warm up exercises with meditation practices, to help relax and focus the creative mind and body. By working freely, layering with ink, pastels, mixed media and collage, you will build up a rich record of your own personal experience of the place. Let the process (and the sketchbook) unfold over the 2 days. You will come away with a complete sketchbook, a beautiful thing in itself, and will be bursting with ideas and inspiration for your own future ways of working.
We will be drawing outside in the gardens when weather allows, coming into the gorgeous studio, flooded with natural light, with time to reflect and work on the sketchbooks in a different space when appropriate. It is a very special place which enables prolonged creative focus.
Come prepared for all weathers. Suitable for all including beginners
We welcome painters in any stage of their practice.
We have a maximum of 10 students. Materials are not included, information will be emailed on booking.
Colour and Light on the Downs
DATES: Friday 8 May - Saturday 9 May;
29 May - 30 May;
25 Sept - 26 Sept
9.30 am - 4.30 pm
In-Person in Emily Ball at Seawhite
Price: £280 (all materials are included)
This is a 2 day structured course led by Emily and Katie. They will offer an exciting collection of processes to help each artist feel immersed in the experience and able to produce drawings that go beyond copying the view and give the artist an injection of courage and creativity to make expressive new work.
Following last year’s success, Emily and Katie are offering 3 different workshops from early summer through autumn for this amazing course, so you can take your pick, or come to all three. And don’t miss out on the follow on course in June when we take all the studies back to the studio to make paintings from this exciting subject.
We will use the Truleigh Centre as our base while we are in the landscape. It is a fabulous recently converted barn space. We have access to it throughout each day to shelter from the elements, if needed, look at the work created and take breaks. It is spacious and light with all the facilities we need for our comfort. It is situated at the top of the Downs, nestled in the surrounding landscape.
All your materials for the 2 days will be provided for you.
Get Grounded
DATES: Monday 18 May - Tuesday 19 May
9.30 am - 4.30 pm
In-Person in Emily Ball at Seawhite
Price: £280 (all materials are included)
Come and walk in the woods when the bluebells are out and the ground is burgeoning with colour and new life. Feel more alive, engage with your natural surroundings, wake up your senses and create! Spend 2 days exploring the nearby woods in this fully immersive, practical and tactile workshop. Drawing with mud, puddle water, leaves and twigs, this will be a very hands on experience!
You will be making drawings in the landscape, about the landscape, with the landscape (sometimes using the landscape as your canvas), using found materials, and making your own tools. You will be responding to the sights, sounds, smells and feel of the woods; returning to the studio each day equipped with natural materials, handfuls of inspiration, and hand made tools to continue working on a larger scale (think Richard Long and his mud drawings!). In the studio you may work on a larger scale, and explore new ways of drawing, experimenting with mediums and binders and different surfaces (paper, card, canvas).
Since cave people made the first marks on cave walls and drew lines in the sand, humans have been drawn to leave a visual trace of themselves. In this workshop, you will be reminded how drawing is a truly tactile, instinctive, primal experience, using the body and natural materials to make marks.
Colour and Light on the Downs - Development into Painting
DATES: Monday, 8 June - Wednesday, 10 June
9.30 am - 4.30 pm
In-Person in Emily Ball at Seawhite
Price: £380
This 3 day course is suitable for any students who have attended the two day Colour and Light courses that Emily and Katie have run from the Trueligh Centre on the South Downs either in 2025 or 2026.
The freshness, freedom and immediacy of the studies made in situ are qualities that are often wished for in sustained and finished paintings. The studies are not there to be copied but to be used as inspiration and triggers for new work. This course is all about unpacking and using the content in these studies to make new painted studies and work towards finished paintings. The colours, marks, layers and memories are material to play and invent with. They have become your landscape for you to walk through and explore. They are reminders of the sensations, the light, the weather and the feelings of being out on the hill.
Students will bring the many beautiful studies that they have made in the landscape and the tutors will demonstrate and provide processes that will enable you to explore the possibilities in them to make new work using either acrylics or oils on canvas, board or paper. Experimentation with paint, tools and mark making will help everyone find the nececssary language to make powerful and exciting paintings.
Summer in the Garden
Monday 22 June - Thursday 25 June
10 am - 12.30 pm
Online
Price: £250
Sitting in the garden at the height of summer is heaven. Whether you have a beautiful garden of your own or you love to visit a garden for your inspiration, this course is a celebration of the abun-dance of the summer garden. In May and June the shoots and buds are urgently pushing forward, gathering pace.
Spring melts into Summer and flowers become centre stage with their splashes of colour jostling for attention. Colours are luminous on the blousy petals of flowers, the bird song is shrill and excited, the shadows are deep, cool and inviting. To find a quiet, shady spot to sit, watch, listen, wonder and draw is the first part of this course. As you sit and make studies it gives you time to notice the foliage, the shapes of shadows and the dance of colour as your gaze meanders through the spaces.
A month before the date of the live online sessions you will be sent a collection of short films that give you demonstrations of ways of working. These that will help you make lots of stud-ies which you will need in preparation for the live classes. During the live online sessions Emily and Katie will show you how to unpack and select from your many studies and create expressive paintings that bring back the glorious riot of colours, patterns, mood and memories of being in the garden.
Artists to refer to for inspiration: Pierre Bonnard, Patrick Heron, Geoffroy Pithon, Anne Griffiths, Hurvin Anderson, Joan Snyder, Joan Mitchell, Joe Packer, Miranda Bolton, Adrian Berg, Tricia Gillman, Emma Biggs, Ivon Hitchens, Elisabeth Cummings, Claude Monet to name but a few.
Summer in the Garden (Seawhite Studio Summer School)
Monday 29 June - Friday 3 July
9.30 am - 4.30 pm
In-Person in Emily Ball at Seawhite
Price: £550
This 5 day painting course takes its inspiration from Highdown Garden near Worthing, a unique chalk garden on the Downs. This garden is beautiful and remarkable. In the unlikely setting of a chalk pit the founders of the garden sourced plants from all over the world that would thrive in this habitat. It is a garden full of delights; mature trees and plants, winding pathways that lead to open spaces where you can sit and drink in the sites, sounds and smells. Long summer days are the time to celebrate the colour and abundance of nature. The first 2 days of the course are spent in the garden making lots of studies capturing the experience of this peaceful and inspiring place. The rest of the week is spent at the Seawhite studio where ambitious and expressive paintings will be created using these studies and our memories of the place. Click here to have a virtual tour of the garden.
Accessing the garden is easy. It is a short walk on flat ground from the carpark. All the paths in the garden are easy to navigate. There are benches dotted everywhere so that you can pause to sit and soak up the atmosphere and draw in comfort. Above the gardens is Highdown Hill; the gateway to the South Downs National Park.
Get Grounded in Devon
Saturday 1 August - Sunday 2 August
10 am - 4 pm
In-Person in Creative Beings, The Old Rectory Studio, Awliscombe, Devon, EX14 3PJ
Price: £195
2 days’ of tutored experimental drawing, with natural materials, in a beautiful setting. Explore a garden, goyle and Food Forest as the ground bursts with form and colour. Feel more alive, engage with your surroundings, wake up your senses and create! Drawing with mud, puddle water, leaves and twigs, this will be a hands-on, practical and immersive experience! Draw in the garden, about the garden, with the garden, using found materials and homemade tools. Respond to the sights, sounds, smells and feel of the land, returning to the studio equipped with handfuls of inspiration. Experiment with natural binders and consider applying colour with pastels and watercolour.
Since people made marks on cave walls, humans have been drawn to leave a visual trace of themselves. In this workshop, you will be reminded how drawing is a truly tactile, instinctive, primal experience, using the body and natural materials to make marks.
This fun, experimental course is suitable for all.
