We've just returned from a research trip to Porto. We are always looking for new destinations for our regular travellers and thought that Porto might be an option for next year. Well is it?
Most certainly it is! It's got all the right ingredients. Beautiful architecture and history, peaceful parks, river views and walks, fantastic food and of course Port!

Top this off with friendly locals and reasonable prices and it's perfect! Message us if you're interested. We're planning on travelling May 2026.

First of all, Happy New Year to all!

We are pleased to have our new dates for 2025 in place and hope you will be able to join us this year. We are keeping Bali, Istanbul, Spain and Krakow as our core destinations but will be researching new places too. There's a possibility of a life drawing trip to Galicia in Northern Spain in September where we have contacts with artists in La Coruña and lecturers at the University in Pontevedra. We'll keep you posted about this one. We hope to get to Gdansk again too and may tie it into the Krakow trip if we get sufficient interest. Message us for details.

Also, don't forget to get in touch with us if you have a custom destination in mind. We will do our best to make it happen!

Let's make 2025 is a happy and creative year! We hope to see you soon! ✍🏻

Here are just some of the drawings by Kathy Sawyer from the Athens drawing trip. We were blessed with fantastic weather on our first visit to this ancient city and are thinking of returning next year. Loving the confident line in these and the atmospheric quality of the 2 drawings on brown paper. What would we do without a white Posca! 😀

Here are a selection of wonderful street photos of locals in Istanbul by Ellen Lawes taken on our trip last May. 

Just back from Krakow last week. We were blessed with fantastic weather and a lovely group including photographer Sharon Cooper. Sharon is a professional photographer who joined us with her daughter Velvet, one of my ex-students from Norwich University of the Arts.

Here are just some of Sharon's photos documenting the trip. 
You can see more of Sharon's work her website https://sharoncooper.co.uk/

We've been listening to the feedback about our destinations and will definitely be keeping Krakow, along with Istanbul on our list for next year. 

I've started working on a book about drawing. It's more about ways of approaching the task of drawing and ways of thinking about drawing than a 'how to do it' book. I'm going to start to post parts of what I'm putting together to get some feedback from an audience. I want it to be a bit confrontational and a little bit funny too, if I can make that work. We'll see. Meanwhile here's a manifesto to start with!

The Manifesto (first draft)

We, the undersigned, are artists, teachers and designers who have been raised in a world in which the process of drawing has been presented as something that is difficult and mysterious.

Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief, the market rewards it, a tide of media and publications reinforce it.

The media is saturated with commercial messages in the form of social media marketing campaigns, books, magazines, educational tools that endorse the view that drawing is hard, that drawing is a highly specialised skill, that drawing takes a long time to learn.

It is a harmful code of public discourse that promotes the idea that we are not able to draw properly and then attempts to sell you a product or technique that has the answers you've been wishing for.

But there are methods more worthy of our time and effort.

We propose a reversal of prioritities in the approach to learning to draw. Away from fake formulae and the 'tricky' towards a more expressive and personal interpretation of the world and our experience. A shift away from copying from photos, a shift away from ’techniques’ that will produce ‘realistic’ results. An active engagement with the real world and real experience. To eradicate sophist ideas that propose, for example, that we need to draw with a differnt side of the brain! ​Ha!

So what is to be done? How do we re-connect with our ability to draw and draw on our creative potential? Read on…

Here are some beautiful drawings by Hayley from the recent trip to Istanbul. I had the pleasure of teaching Hayley at University more than 30 years ago and it was great to catch up again after such a long time. 

For a teacher it's great to see someone who is still actively creating and developing a very accomplished portfolio of work. Check out some of Hayley's other working this recent article. https://pukaarmagazine.com/an-arty-pilgrimage/

Or you can follow her on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hayleyfernfineart/