Reportage, Drawing & the City

Course description

This 3-day reportage drawing course will cover a broad range of documentary drawing techniques. Participants will be working on location in London each day, exploring the city and capturing the ever changing landscape. The activities will be suited to all levels of drawing ability, allowing you to build confidence and hone your skills of observation and storytelling no matter your experience level. Suited to anyone that fancies themselves a journalist or private detective, we will delve into bustling streets and the headlines of the day to make work in response. This course will help you to create a body of work that documents your experience of London's landscape in 2022. A mixture of structured and self-led tasks will allow you to learn new skills and then follow your nose to hone them. Group discussions on the work created each day will also form new ideas and ways of working. Each day will be an adventure in curiosity and building your artistic voice; uncovering new ways of drawing and following narrative threads. You will learn your way of going with the flow of the location, chance encounters and how to plan a reportage investigation. These drawings can be used in a portfolio, publication, memoir or the start of a new body of work.

Please note: we will be out and about all day, whatever the weather. This will include walking and standing up drawing for large portions of the day, as well as travelling to different central London locations throughout the week

Example course structure

• Day 1 — The Artist as Flâneur
  A fast paced introduction to the basics of working on location, learning the core skills and principles while navigating through the city.
• Day 2 — Face to Face
  A word in your ear and on the page today as conversation becomes the topic of exploration. Combined with the essential ingredients, we will interview and overhear our way to getting a drawing in edgeways.
• Day 3 — Who What Where When
  This will be the most self-directed day, allowing participants to focus on their preferred working styles to create a mini reportage project based around a current headline. A final group discussion and celebration of the work made throughout.

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Course tutors

This course is taught by reportage artist and illustrator, Laur Fitton, who is also a lecturer on the BA Illustration Animation course at KSA.

What to bring

A basic list will be sent to you a week in advance of the course start date. All other materials are provided by Kingston School of Art (KSA).