Materials: All materials provided as part of your course fee  .

Format: Weekend long workshop, with lunch provided.   

Dates: 10.30–5.30pm, Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 March.

Fees: £180 per two-day course.

Bookings: please click here.

Course Information:

Wysing studio artist Florian Roithmayr will teach a two days course on moulding and casting materials.

Moulding and casting are traditional sculptural techniques, but the imprint, the gesture informing moulding and casting can also be found in other art techniques and even in areas not often associated with art making.

This two-day course will explore different processes based on the imprint, of the coming together of different matter and the consequences of their exchange.

Over the course, participants will work with basic materials like clay, plaster, concrete, wax and Papier-mâché to develop an experience of the relationship between mould and cast: of form-giving and form-receiving. These materials and processes will be used in speculative, unpredictable ways to allow accidents and chance occurrences, allowing and inviting contamination's, reversals, decay and destruction. The focus will be on making through process rather than through resemblance.

Please note: this is an experimental workshop; participants will unlearn traditional mould making techniques. Please wear appropriate clothing.  

Tutor Biography:

Florian Roithmayr initially trained as a theatre designer with Herbert Scherreiks in Germany before studying and researching art at the Slade School and Goldsmith College in London. He works with sculpture to generate and trace exchanges between bodies, between bodies and materials, and between materials. The ambition is to register the consequences of one surface or material yielding another through capturing the unexpected gestures that occur in the gap between mould and cast. In this interstitial space, occurrences often remain unforeseeable and unaccountable.

Recent solo exhibitions include: The Humility of Plaster, HS Projects, London, UK (2019); something infinitely distant and strange, Tenderpixel, London, UK (2018); these here withins, Renata Fabbri Gallery, Milan, IT (2018).

Materials: All materials are provided as part of this workshop.

Format: Two part course, over two Saturday mornings.

Dates: 10.30–13.30pm, Saturday 14th March and Saturday 28th March.

Fees: £80 per two-day course.

Bookings: please click here.

Course Information:

In this short course, Wysing’s studio artist Emanuela Cusin will cover introductions to various camera-less photography techniques including cyanotype, chemigrams, and lumen prints.

The course consists of two half day workshops. The first will focus on cyanotype and the second on chemigrams and lumen-prints.

During the course, participants will learn about cyanotpye, chemigrams and lumen prints and how contemporary artists experiment with these techniques. They will become familiar with these processes from beginning to end and will learn about about suitable materials that can be used.

Tutor Biography:

Emanuela Cusin’s current practice focuses on the concept of uprootedness and themes of movement and inertia, dislocation, destruction, vulnerability and resistance. Her work aims to create space for confrontation and recovery, for herself, the audience and others involved.

In recent years, she has been collaborating with Dr Katharina Karcher from the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham, with whom she is currently working on the notion of in/security in urban spaces and what it means to live in a constant state of alert and vulnerability. Emanuela has also been working with Professor Abir Al Tabbaa from the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, whose research has inspired her time-based work Breaking Point.  

Materials: Drawing materials will be provided. If you have an easel, please feel free to bring.

Format: Evening class over six weeks.

Dates: 7–9pm, Monday 24 February to Monday 30 March.

Fees: £115 per six-week course.

Bookings: please click here.

Course Information:

Wysing Studio artist Penny Klein will teach a short course on drawing.

The Surprise of Drawing is a six-week drawing course centred on the principle that everyone can draw. These experimental sessions will give the chance to those with little or no experience to explore drawing, those out of practice to re-explore drawing, and for anyone in a rut to shake up old drawing habits. It will be a chance to make work that looks both out into the world and inside ourselves for inspiration.

Each session will combine short and dynamic exercises to help participants warm up and enter an unselfconscious state in which they are less inhibited by ideas of perfection and failure. We will shift emphasis from technical accuracy, and instead spend time using different strategies to help unlock surprising talents we all have within. We will be lead by these discoveries to make work that is unique to each participant. Each week will see us move through a mixture of observation and imagination based exercises, leading up to longer form exercises that allow participants time to develop more sustained drawings. The sessions will be playful yet structured, encouraging participants to explore and experiment with the ways they see, translate and create.  

Tutor Biography:

Penny Klein is an artist and educator, with a BA in illustration. Her work is concerned with expressiveness, often improvised, intimate and immediate. She has taught drawing to both children and adults.  

Materials: Please bring with you any materials or media you would like to use. Drawing boards will be provided.

Price: £100 per five week course.

Format: Evening course over five weeks.

Dates: 7–9pm, Wednesday 18 March to Wednesday 6 May 2020.  

Bookings: please click here.

Course Information:

Wysing studio artist Soheila Sokhanvari will lead a short course of drawing classes.

Ways of Seeing  (Life Drawing) aims to develop new ways of self-expression through learning art history and practical drawing skills.

The course will introduce participants to works of a number of major artists past and present, studying the way they looked and how they made their marks. The artists introduced are as follows, Egon Schiele, Paul Cézanne, Georg Baselitz and Tracey Emin. These two-hour workshops are designed to allow the participants to learn about each artist and to look at the world through their eyes in order to reach a new way of mark making and to come to a new approach of making drawings.

These classes will provide artists of all abilities to learn new skills, to draw from a life model, to think about their own practice, to socialize with a community of other artists and to enjoy the settings at Wysing.

Tutor Biography:

Soheila Sokhanvari is a multi-media artist whose work is rooted in her Iranian heritage as a reflection of her experiences of loss of homeland in her childhood entwined with political events and collective trauma. Trained as a Persian miniature painter as a child she is inherently drawn to narratives that combine her Eastern and Western heritage.  She describes her work as an aesthetic skin to deeper political layers and narrative. 

Materials: All materials will be provided for you, but marbling can be messy. Please wear old clothes, or bring an apron, just in case!

Format: One-off 3 hour introductory workshop.

Dates available: 10.30–13.30pm, Monday 24 February, Monday 9 March or Monday 23 March.

Fees: £50 per introductory class.

Bookings: please click here.

Course Information:

Wysing studio artist Robert Foster will lead a short course on Suminagashi, a Japanese paper marbling technique.

Learn how to create beautiful unique prints by floating ink on water to form dynamic patterns.

Also known as “floating ink”, Suminagashi (墨 流 し), is a traditional art form that originates from 12th Century Japan and is used to create ornate, dynamic patterns. The earliest form of paper marbling, Suminagashi is a meditative and organic process that uses a simple set of materials to create incredible results!

In the session participants will learn the materials required to create Suminagashi prints and a set of different techniques to create a range of effects. Together, we will explore how to dry and press the papers for crafting or to enjoy as finished prints and ideas for how to use your papers once dry and pressed.

By the end of the workshop participants will have the skills to produce your very own designs at home. You will also have created a set of your own prints to take away with you.

Tutor Biography:

Robert Foster was born in 1989 in Wegberg, Germany and studied at Manchester Metropolitan University, earning his bachelors in Fine Art in 2011. He lives near Cambridge, UK and has been a studio holder at Wysing Arts Centre since 2017.

He is fascinated by historical modes of productions that have strong connections with spirituality and the search for meaning. These processes encompass calligraphy, paper marbling and ceramics, all methods that resonate with him for the ability to still the mind, provide space for contemplation and offer a glimpse of the beauty of the absolute or the unknown.

Robert has exhibited nationally and internationally, taking part in projects in India, Iceland, USA, Singapore, Bulgaria and Italy.

Materials: Paints and oil are provided, but you will need to bring some equipment as follows:

- 5 x Paint brushes (please ensure you bring a filbert, a round and a flat, one stiff and one soft)  

- 1 x A3 Canvas paper pad for oil painting 

- A palette or tear-off palettes (as you prefer) 

- A palette knife (preferably metal)  

Format: 2 hour class on Saturday mornings, over 6 weeks 

Dates: 10.30-12.30pm Saturday 25 April until Saturday 13 June (no class on 9 May or 30 May) 

Fees: £125 for the 6 week course

Bookings: please click here.

Course Information:

In this course you’ll work with studio artist Damaris Athene to explore oil paint and some of the different ways you can use it. 

Starting with colour theory you’ll go on to experiment with impasto, using a palette knife, gestural brushstrokes and thinning paint. In the final session you’ll bring together the techniques you’ve learnt to make a painting of your chosen subject.

Tutor Biography:

Damaris Athene graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in 2015 with a BA(Hons) in Painting. Her practice explores corporeality and the human form, focusing on painting and starting to include digital print and sculpture. Damaris has been the Circuit Studio Artist at Wysing Arts Centre since 2018.  

In 2017 Damaris started working as an Artist Facilitator and private tutor, after completing the Circuit Conductors training programme. She has worked for both Wysing and Kettle’s Yard creating art workshops for all ages in various settings and formats, such as long-term projects with schools and youth groups and one-off workshops open to the public. Damaris has experience tutoring students aged 4 to 65 years old, covering many different techniques and mediums ranging from digital photography to sculpture to oil painting.