Join artist Tom Rickman for a Degas-inspired recording. Recorded live from our studio in St Ives with a model, you are invited to join in at home with guided exercises. 

At the age of 39, the artist Edgar Degas dedicated the rest of his artistic career to painting dancers. Degas later told Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard, ‘It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.’ Join us for this webinar inspired by Degas’s most famous subject matter. Working from a live model, you will see how Degas’ approach to capturing the figure in motion and rest inspired new perspectives and compositions.

Draw-along with Tom from the comfort of your own home as he guides you through a series of exercises based around Degas’s dancing figures. Drawing the figure from above or below, allowing the figure to ‘run-off’ the page, and adding light and luminosity to fabric via charcoal and chalk on coloured paper. By watching Tom at work, learn how to use simple, expressive outlines and shade for dramatic effect. 

Starting with 5 and 10 minute poses, these will be followed by longer poses to develop your drawings. You will have the option to introduce colour using gouache, watercolour or pastel. 

Recorded in our studio overlooking Porthmeor Beach, you will draw alongside Tom, from the model. Get a unique insight into how to work with shape and shadow as well as outline and form.

The screen will be split between the model and Tom’s paper throughout the session so you can draw and paint along with Tom. Your view will be different due to how we position the cameras.