drawing escapes - News about our drawing trips and alumni

Mapping ALSO | Drawing Workshop

6/28/2022

Mapping ALSO
Dates: Saturday 9 July, 1,30pm
Location: ALSO Festival, Warwickshire

Experience #ALSO22 through the eyes of a mapmaker and draw in response to the sensations of your surroundings.⁠
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Led by Isabella as part of Yodomo's workshop series, this 1.5-hour session will prompt you to consider and map your observations of the festival.⁠

Tickets for the workshop cost £17.50pp (+ a Festival Ticket). Click here to learn more

Drawing at St Katherine Docks

6/22/2022

We’re back! ✨✏️ Drawing Escape’s next meet-up is at St Katherine Docks, London ✍🏻

We’re meeting on Saturday 2nd July at 1.30 pm outside the White Mulberries Cafe. (Google maps link here).

Join us for an afternoon of location drawing with me and Martyn, finishing with a 'show and tell' over a beer or a glass of wine.

Everyone is welcome but please RSVP.
Hope you can make it! ☺️

Drawing in London

6/6/2022

Next Event
St Katherine Docks 1.30pm on the 2nd July 2022

Meeting outside the White Mulberries cafe.

Isabella and Martyn will be running this drawing event. It's a great chance to meet like-minded people and to meet us at Drawing Escapes. It's free but please email us in advance if you wish to attend. Click here

🙏🏼

Just back from Estonia and Latvia

6/4/2022

We're just back from our 8 night trip to Tallinn, Tartu and Riga. Here are a couple of beautiful drawings from Kathy Olsson. We were particularly impressed with Estonia and will definitely be coming back again in the future. The towns are stunning and the people are so welcoming!

Thanks once more to those who booked and thanks for your patience with the delays caused by Covid. It was a long time coming but so glad we made it! See you again soon Tallinn!

Our next drawing day in London

3/23/2022

We're happy to announce that Izzy will be running our next drawing day in London at Kings Cross. This is a great opportunity to meet like-minded people and meet us at Drawing Escapes.

Izzy will meet you in Granary Square at 2pm on May 7th and we'll be drawing on location followed by a show-and-tell session later in the afternoon.

It's free, so we hope you might join us, but please let us know if you're coming by emailing us on our booking page.

Good news...UK covid travel rules to end

3/14/2022

The transport secretary has confirmed that all remaining Covid travel measures will be scrapped.

Currently, everyone travelling to the UK must complete a passenger locator form before they arrive. Travellers who are not fully vaccinated have to take a Covid test before departure, fill in the form, and book and pay for a PCR test after arriving.
Grant Shapps confirmed in a tweet that these rules will end at 04:00 on Friday.
His announcement means that passengers who are not fully vaccinated will no longer have to take Covid tests before and after travelling to the UK. The passenger locator form will no longer be necessary either.
This simplifies all of our travel arrangements which means more time to focus on the drawing!

Bali is due to open

3/1/2022

We received some great news yesterday! The news, that we've been waiting to hear for so long, is that Bali is opening to visitors on March 14th for vaccinated travellers. This means that our trip which is planned for late October can go ahead!

If you've been thinking about joining us please get in touch. We have 3 places left. For those of you who have booked already please begin to get very excited! More news soon... :)

Dates for 2022... at last!

1/28/2022

Finally we can confirm some dates for 2022. We are now confident that we can run trips to the following destinations with the minimum of fuss. The only exception is Bali which still hasn't shown signs of opening up. Our current group, though, is very flexible and as soon as we can we'll be off. I think October this year is a very strong possibility so watch this space.

If you're interested in any of the other destinations please get in touch as soon as possible here or email us directly at mart.art@me.com. Go well, stay safe, and a Happy New Year from Drawing Escapes.

A Story about the Power of Drawing

1/7/2022

The drawing that re-united a man with his family. Such an amazing story showing how drawing can communicate, and in this case, change a life! Full article here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-59848162?at_medium=RSS&amp%3Bat_campaign=KARANGA

Ideas, experiments, ambitions and problems to solve.

11/26/2021

Returning from a drawing holiday by Izzy Mitchell

This was my third drawing trip to Spain with Martyn and Drawing Escapes. I desired to go (again) for the chance to spend a week focused on drawing, with the added benefits of sunshine and being in an inspiring new environment.

The week did not disappoint. I spent the first few days working in every medium under the sun (literally), channelling my excitement for the freedom of time and abundance of interesting things to draw. However, I developed a desire to slow down and focus more, in order to streamline my frantic energy into a process that I have more control over, and could continue to develop in the pockets of time that I would find once returned home.

I turned the focus of my drawings to structure, looking closely at the structure of towns, boats, ravines and their surrounding landscapes. I stripped back my pencil case to a single, mechanical pencil. This was novel for me, as colour is such a large part of my work, yet I found working in greyscale made it easier to focus on achieving the right balance of contrasts. The same can be said about working with a single weight of line; it made me explore new ways of drawing to represent texture, and the pencil lines somehow seem bolder on the page despite being finer than my soft, smudgy watercolour pencils.

Reflecting back on the drawings I made during the trip, I find the more painterly drawings that I created using my usual colourful media exciting as they feel resolved, or capture a memory of the place. However, the pieces in pencil are perhaps more exciting as they have much more potential to be developed and inspire future pieces in other media.

It’s funny returning from a drawing holiday - the blank white sketchbook I packed so eagerly is now an all-consuming brain dump of ideas, experiments, ambitions and problems to solve.

Needless to say, I’m still on the solving problems bit. But that’s part of the fun. I still find it challenging to stay focused - to work through and develop ideas, take leaps, and not get put off when it gets difficult, and not get distracted by new and shiny and seemingly simpler ideas (unless they’re really really good).

I definitely feel like this drawing trip has helped me really see the value in slowing down and trusting a process. Even if it’s not strictly the process I’ll always use, as long as I’m enjoying it or I’m learning something, then just go with it. After all, what’s the rush?