From Observation to Illustration
Learn how to document the world around you through illustration in this 4-week in-person course at Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration.
You'll learn how to approach drawing from observation and how to bring your own lens to recording the world around you. Starting with reportage techniques and quick studies, you'll build the basics of a sketchbook practice, before moving into landscape and space, followed by city life and people.
You'll experiment with composition, colours and mark-making along the way, developing a sketchbook practice you can keep using well beyond the course. In the final week, you'll bring your observations together into a mini zine or sketchbook, telling a story through a series of images.
This course might suit you if you are:
- new to illustration and observational drawing
- looking to loosen up your drawing and work more quickly and intuitively
- wanting to build or maintain a diary sketchbook practice
- an artist returning to drawing after time away and wanting a refresher
This course will support you in building confidence in observational drawing, developing habits you can keep using long after the course ends, in a supportive and playful creative environment.
Joey Yu is a London-based illustrator and artist. Since graduating from Kingston School of Art in 2017, she has collaborated with clients including Rimowa, Mubi, The New Yorker, Bombay Sapphire and HarperCollins, among others.
Her hand-drawn, mixed-media work plays with everyday perspectives, continuously warping the ways we view the world. She has undertaken artist residencies in Seoul and Jeju Island, South Korea, and in Bahia, Brazil - experiences that continue to inspire her vibrant, observational approach to storytelling through art.
Find Joey online at @itsjoeyyu(opens in new window) and joeyyu.format.com(opens in new window).
Session 1 - Thursday 15 October, 6-8pm
Session 2 - Thursday 22 October, 6-8pm
Session 3 - Thursday 5 November, 6-8pm
Session 4 - Thursday 12 November, 6-8pm
Please note there is a 1 week break on Thursday 29 October.
Week 1 - An introduction to reportage, observational illustration and sketchbooks, trialling quick studies using a range of different techniques.
Week 2 - Landscape and space, exploring how to observe and translate a sense of place into your sketchbook.
Week 3 - City and people, developing quick, gestural approaches to capturing figures and everyday life in motion.
Week 4 - Bringing it together: exploring different sketchbook formats and combining a series of images into a mini zine or sketchbook that tells a story.
By the end of the course, you'll have experimented with the sketchbook as a medium, learning to draw quickly, intuitively and confidently while recording people and places in real time. You'll come away with a small body of work brought together in a sketchbook - one you can keep building on beyond the course.
There will be after-class tasks for course participants to complete every week. Participants are encouraged to complete the tasks as much as possible.
Access to basic materials will be available as part of the course, but we recommend bringing a sketchbook and a variety of drawing materials of your choice. These could be pencils, gouache, pastels, pens etc.
We want our courses, workshops and events to be inclusive and accessible. If you have any accessibility requests or questions, please email events@qbcentre.org.uk.
Ahead of your visit, you can find out more about Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration’s facilities and accessibility: Access at the Centre. (opens in new window)