The Nature of Trees

The Nature of Trees is part of Hardy’s Wessex: Drawing On The Ancient Past, a six-week course led by artist Helen Garrett. Helen will take you on a creative journey through Thomas Hardy’s work, inspirations and Dorset Museum’s collections.

Event Description

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.

Event Location

Dorset Museum

Event Places:

Places: 12

Price

£140 for a 6 week course, which includes tea and coffee and an opportunity to look around the Museum

Event Date:

24th June 2022

Sawfish are also called carpenter sharks...but they are rays, not sharks!

There’s also a species called a sawshark, but that’s, well, a shark!

What the heck is a lek?

Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.

Road Runner!

The great bustard has a dignified slow walk but tends to run when disturbed, rather than fly.

Belly Buster!

The hen-bird on display at The Salisbury Museum was one of the last great bustards to be eaten in the town!

Skip to content