Material — Knowing Your Tools
A musician must know their instrument before they can make music. The same is true for the painter and draughtsman. An intimate knowledge of your materials — not just how to use them, but how they behave, resist, and surprise — is a prerequisite for creative freedom.
In the first cycle of creativity, we explore the full range of the painter’s material world:
- Points — pencils, pens, and other pointed instruments; their qualities and ranges
- Dry Media — charcoal, conté, graphite, pastel; the language of the dry mark
- Watercolour — the medium of light and transparency
- Brushes — types, qualities, and the relationship between brush and mark
- Paper — weight, texture, tooth, and how surface affects medium
- Canvas — preparation, texture, and the different demands of the larger format
- Studio Easels — working at scale in a fixed space
- Portable Easels — working outdoors, in movement, in the world