April to July 2020 I constructed an on-line course “The Art of Drawing Horses” through a Canadian platform called coursecraft.
It was a big learning curve, first to get familiar with the platform layout, and secondly to become confident with using video. There were more than a few stumbling blocks along the way, as I discovered that my local broadband speed was much too slow to transmit videos! Many youtube videos later and with the help of a video artist in Edinburgh, and the postal service (yes I had to resort to pen drives to send him my videos) it was completed. Now I am on superfast broadband, courtesy BT.
I launched it in July and it was an instant success. I had no idea what the reception would be and how it would work out in practice. Would I be overwhelmed, and how would I communicate with the participants? Would it make sense to them? One of the main advantages of creating this course was that I had had to dig deep to understand my own process. I worked through it all , making set after set of drawings, and filming myself. I learned so much about how to combine my energetic and expressive way of drawing with analysis, and then planning to create and select a theme or focus.
Now, nearly 3 months later, I curretly have 28 participants, some of whom have completed the course and sent me their inspirational drawings. Others connect through the comments sections of the modules or via the group facebook page. We are about to create a zoom group.
Below you can see something of the materials we used and the stages we go through from free mark making to careful assessment of proportional rules to combining expression and knowledge and drawing from memory to finding a theme. My next e course is “Drawing the Horse’s Head” available later in 2020.
