Hardy’s Wessex: Drawing On The Ancient Past
Six-Week Creative Course With Helen Garrett
Programme of events:
Week 1: 17 June – Material Earth –
Exploring the unique qualities of rocks and fossils from the museum’s collection using raw pigments, chalk and pastel techniques with handmade and cotton papers – with a reference to Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes description of a character meeting face to face a fossilized creature.
Week 2: 24 June – The Nature of Trees
With excerpts from The Woodlanders and other writings
A dynamic session with observational studies from branches, bark and leaves, experimental drawing techniques, working with texture, surface pattern, frottage, subtractive techniques, Graphite blocks and pencil.
Week 3: 1 July – The Poetic Imagination –
A Journey Through Natural Form. Using natural form as our starting place and inspiration we will work in an intuitive way allowing our writing to emerge naturally from our sense of connection with material and the power of the imagination. Materials will include goose feather quills, Chinese ink for writing and illustrations.
Week 4: 8 July – Romantic Landscapes in Art
Hardy’s descriptions have inspired artists to convey scenes from his stories. We will look at those displayed in the Hardy’s Dorset Gallery and touch on the Romantic Art movement creating atmospheric landscapes. We will draw and paint onto colour grounds using sepia inks, red conte crayons and pencil.
Week 5: 15 July – Drama and The Elements in Hardy’s Writing
Using a wonderfully exciting ink and bleach technique and inspired by the drama of Hardy’s writing, we will play with scale, contrast, tempest and power in our ink paintings. We will draw imagery from Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Return of the Native and some of Hardy’s best loved poetry.
Week 6: 22 July – Exploring the Hardy Exhibition
Our last week will offer the opportunity to spend some quality reflective time in the Hardy’s Wessex exhibition; sketching from his personal possessions and other artefacts in the Dorset Museum collection. Using sepia/coloured pencils and our sketchbooks, developing a further study – group reflection time/feedback.