DrawBrighton

Sept - Nov '24 / AUTUMN TERM: GRAPHITE

Added 2024-09-20 17:00:12 +0000 UTC

Hello friends and patrons,

It has been a while since I posted a proper update on here, but it's the start of a new academic year and I want to get back to termly updates of what's going on here at Draw. Below you'll find some updates on what to expect at Draw over the next few months. If you're new to the Patreon or haven't signed up a the paid tier and want to know what you'd get access to, have a look at our 'Start here' page.

It's always a real joy to see all of you at the live online sessions and to see everything you post up online but one of the big challenges we've found with this online incarnation of Draw, is creating a community platform that is accessible to everybody. Slack sadly changed their terms of use, which has stopped us using the platform and a lot of our core community don't want to sign up to another platform, which stopped us launching a Discord. For now, we're going to start experimenting with Patreon's internal chat function with a new thread for the Portrait Drawing course and we'd still encourage you to post up on the Facebook group, or to tag us on Instagram if you use either platform! Perhaps the mixed approach is the best one to go for. Anyhow, here are some very exciting updates for the year ahead.

Image by Roy Eastland

GRAPHITE TERM

From this year onwards we'll be splitting our Sept-Aug academic year into four seasonal terms, theming each of those terms around a different medium to help you all explore different materials and discover new artists. This autumn (Sept/Oct/Nov) we’re going to focus on graphite as our chosen drawing medium, with online and in-person events themed around the medium. Graphite is one of our youngest but most ubiquitous drawing materials, coming into common use after its discovery in Cumbria, England in the 16th Century - Lance has made a really handy introduction to graphite here.

We're bringing back our monthly ETC artists talks and have three artists who work in graphite booked for this autumn, Leggy Gordon on the 27th Sept, Meg Buick on the 25th Oct and Sena Adjovi on the 6th Dec. All of those talks are free and you don't need to sign up to attended - if you receive this update you'll also receive the link to attend the talk and the recording afterwards. You can read more about our upcoming terms in the Draw Brochure below.

2023-24 PROGRAMME

We released a brand new programme this week, covering all of our online and in-person sessions for the next year, featuring specially commissioned cover artwork by Megan Snyders. The biggest change for our Patreon supporters here will be the addition of some extra monthly classes to our programme, but there are some very exciting in-person courses coming up over the next year. You'll find the full (Online & In-person) and the Online-only programmes attached to this email.

PHOTO-SETS

We're always open to new ideas for photosets, so please do let us know in the comments bellow if you'd like to see something specific in future. Our autumn teaser is already out for all paid supporters. Here's the big plan for the year ahead:

Winter 2025 - New photo-sets from Dmac, Nasim, Patch & Jenny Mac with a seasonal special of Bell & Lance posing as Elves to accompany last years Father Christmas photosets, shot by Olly & Justyna.
Spring 2025 - A domestic photoset series of group tableau, requested by you and photographed by Justyna Neryng!
Summer 2025 - New photo-sets from Hannah Jay and Mariana, plus guest models photographed by Justyna Neryng.
Autumn 2025 - A Pre-Raphaelite inspired photo-set series shot by Justyna Neryng.

MONTHLY EXPERIMENTAL LIFE DRAWING

For a while we've wanted to add a new live session which would help to help you experiment with new materials and the wonderful Emma Prothero, host of our Thursday Portrait Club, proposed a new monthly 2-hour live sessions to do just that. It will run on the first Sunday of every month from 3-5pm (UK time) and the planned materials are laid out in our brochure - the materials list will be circulated the Sunday before for everybody on the Student & Life Drawing tiers and you just need to click on the link that is circulated on the day to join the session. Rather than have a model posing live Emma will be sharing images from the photo library on the Zoom screen, demonstrating the process of the month live while encouraging you to work from the same images. It should be a really fun addition to the programme and we'd welcome feedback as we refine the format. As always we'd love to have our international crowd join live - just check the time against your own timezone; if you miss it, we'll be recording it and releasing in over the following week.

Sun 6th Oct / 3-5pm (UK time) / Experimental life drawing: Graphite powder

Sun 3rd Nov / 3-5pm (UK time) / Experimental life drawing: Water-soluble graphite

Sun 1st Dec / 3-5pm (UK time) / Experimental life drawing: Subtractive painting with oil paint

THE PORTRAIT COURSE

The Portrait course is finally due to restart at the end of November. After releasing our first six videos last year we had to put the course on hold so that I could focus on managing our escalating studio costs and better account for the time the videos take to make. Although we had the majority of the 7th video recorded for the last year I haven't been able to free up the days to edit and release it, but after some false starts earlier this year we're now ready to share it with everybody in the first few days of December. Thank you all for being so patient!

During the pause we realised that the initial weekly release didn't give people enough time to properly practice the exercises and ideas in the videos, so we now recommend that anybody following the course takes a month per video to fully internalise the ideas. Now that we have a proper plan in place to record the remaining lessons in this course and to record, edit & release next years course I've condensed the planned content of the future lessons into a smaller number of longer videos, with the full programme now updated on the Draw Navigator and the Portrait Course listing. If you have any questions about the portrait course, or would like to share your progress with peers you can join the new Portrait Course chat. We won't be able to give feedback on work yet, but hopefully this should become a good channel for sharing course-specific queries and sharing with other people using the same lessons.

WHERE DOES ALL THE MONEY GO?

We are a non-profit making organisation and all of the money we make here on Patreon is re-invested into our community of models, artists & tutors. I volunteer for Draw three-four days a week (my income comes from writing instructional drawing books and teaching for galleries) while all of the rest of the team at Draw are paid freelancers with Sara & Megan making sure everything runs as smoothly as possible. 25% of our Patreon income is distributed in a monthly royalty to our 65 core models, 60% of the Patreon income goes into running our online sessions & commissioning new photosets and 10% goes into the activities below. At the moment Draw still doesn't break even, so we don't make a profit; if we do get to a point of making a profit, that money will be re-invested into our community.

Model hardship fund – as our freelancers become stretched between stagnant pay at other organisations and increasing costs we’ve been handing out support grants to cover unexpected travel costs, bills and funding investments in new work equipment.
Sick pay – Patreon allows us to pay sick pay to models & tutors at Draw for in-person and online classes, helping to set a more compassionate precedent for freelancers and ensure that all of our crew have time to recover when they’re ill.
Sponsorship – we’ve been able to continue to sponsor other groups and initiatives aimed at increasing diversity in life modelling and drawing communities, as well as supporting access for people with learning difficulties through local charities in Brighton
Portrait & Urban Sketching clubs – the Patreon funds our free in-person portrait drawing sessions in Brighton, offering an opportunity for people to draw for free in a welcoming environment.

That's it for now! Thank you all so much for your support keeping Draw running and helping us keep our community of models and tutors fairly paid. I'll look forward to seeing you all online soon.

Warmest wishes,

Jake

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Ps. if you wanted to keep up to date on our regular comings & goings, you can find us here: