Chichester Cathedral: Drawing sound, space and light

Course Dates May 15^th - 17^th (Wednesday - Friday) 2024

Location: Chichester Cathedral day 1, Seawhite Studio day 2 and 3. Wed 15th May we meet at Chichester Cathedral Main Entrance at 9.30am – 4.30pm. Bring your own lunch to eat outside or visit a local cafe (Pallant House Gallery is very nearby) Thurs 16th and Fri 17th May we meet at Seawhite Studio.

Drawing with all your senses, using pencils and coloured pastels in the cathe-dral itself, you will be encouraged to make expressive and experimental studies on a small scale as you directly experience the immensity of the building. Your drawings may be filled with gesture, colour, sound, the cool air, the touch of stone, the echoes of footsteps and organ music…. We can spend the whole day there, with one to one guidance, and group discussions about how we tackle such an enormous subject. Taking these back to the studio, you will have 2 more days to experiment, scaling up your marks and observations onto large rolls of paper, letting the drawing grow and expand, as if you were the architect and builder constructing it in space.

Guided meditations and memory exercises will help reconnect you with the original experience, as well as your studies. Think big, extend, add more paper, reach up to the roof beams with charcoal on sticks. Let this drawing become a meditation on sound space and light. How can we convey this in our drawing? How can we use the energy and atmosphere of our direct experience in the small drawings to reach out and encompass the space you need to recreate it on a large scale?

 

Day 1

You will work small and fast in the cathedral on the first day, working directly into a A5 sketchbook. Additional surfaces to work on will be given to you on arrival including coloured paper, tracing paper, tissue paper. Warm up exercises and short meditations will be offered to get you started and help you when feeling overwhelmed. By the end of the day you will have filled the book and found a focus for your visual and sensory exploration of the space. You may work in colour or black and white. See materials list below.

 

 

Day 1 and 3

Back in the studio on day 2 you will be given paper on which to develop larger pieces of work, inspired by, but not limited to, the studies made in your sketchbook. Drawing and meditation exercises will be used to encourage the use of memory and writing to trigger new and remembered visual responses. The studio drawings will be large and experimental, using charcoal and pastels as your main material, but anything goes. See materials list in the attached course details.