This is an opportunity to draw a dancer in action. Instead of drawing from a still, posed figure, or from photographs, depicting someone who is not sitting still is a reason to draw loosely, to work with energy and rhythm. It is also an experience and an interaction, which makes it completely different from watching a video or using still images.
Tom will be at hand to offer guidance- where this is wanted- and to demonstrate possible ways to approach the challenge of depicting the moving figure.
What to bring: Bring any drawing materials you would like to use- charcoal, pencils, pastel, watercolours, ink. We will provide plenty, too. If you want the option of painting, then I suggest using watercolour paper- no smaller than A4, but ingres and other pastel papers are good, if you don't plan to add water; canvases are lovely to both draw and paint on, old pieces of mountboard are great to scrawl on in biro at high speed. You may like to work on a large scale, you may want to use many pieces of paper, or make many smaller drawings on each page- or do both.
When: Saturday 15 November 2025 11am-1pm
Tickets: £22
In 2022, I had the chance to spend 4 mornings at Pavilion Dance, drawing the 6 members of Richard Chappell Dance, plus freelance dancers and students, as they warmed up. I had never watched dance in any focussed way, and would have been just as happy to have drawn scaffolders or accountants, so I was caught unawares by what a moving and immersive experience it was- it is one that I recommend.
In that time I made over 100 drawings, and potentially, I could make many more pieces of art from these, again. This workshop is just one session, but I very strongly suggest that participants plan not to work on one single image, or even to hope for a magnificent “finished piece”, but to make many fast drawings as you enjoy and immerse yourself in the experience.
If you are anything like me, you will find out that you are much slower than you thought you were- but realise that by the end of the session, you are drawing far faster than you were at the beginning, even if you feel like you've been for a run! My drawings started out very tight and rigid, but by the end of each morning, I was drawing with a loose fluency that was a lot of fun. And, when you get back home, you can not only work on your drawings and make new ones in response to them, but you can put all those dance moves into practice in your kitchen. That's what I do.
Tom Marshall
About the dancer: Natalie Watson is contemporary dance artist based in Hampshire. Natalie graduated from Chichester University with BA and MA in Dance. Since then, she has gone on to perform and work with a number of different national companies and choreographers such as, Genevieve Say, Fluid Motion Theatre Company, Grace Willow and Made By Katie Green. Alongside dancing professionally, Natalie teaches and choreographers for a range of educational and community settings. She specialises in dance theatre, storytelling through movement and placing dance in both traditional and unconventional performance spaces.
