What to bring with you - Cardiff School of Art and Design

The principles of drawing
Date: Saturday and Sunday 23 and 24 May 2015, 10am to 2pm OR Saturday 20 and
Saturday 27 June 2015 OR Saturday and Saturday 8 August 2015
Course length: 2 sessions
Price: £75 (£67.50 for current Cardiff Met undergraduate or post-graduate students)
Tutor: Sebastian Aplin
Level: All welcome
What to bring with you: One of the joys of drawing is the knowledge you gain in about choosing
materials. I have included an outline of what materials we will be using so that you can investigate
what drawing equipment is likely to suit you. Bring in old drawing equipment that you have as well
as it could provide you with more options.
We want to be able to cover areas of paper fairly swiftly with a mixture of line and blocking (thick
shading). We’ll not only work dark on light (like normal pencil drawings) but also light on dark using
white and grey chalk pastel on black and mid tone paper.
The minimum size of paper used should be A3 although you can get larger sheets of paper and cut
them down to size if you wish. The paper should have some kind of texture (cartridge paper is fine)
and we will need white paper as well as some black and mid tone paper as well. Sugar paper is a
cheap alternative to more expensive cartridge or cotton based paper but should be well flattened
before the session. If you are cutting your own paper remember to bring a craft knife and clips.
It is useful to be able to use the point of a drawing implement for the line and the side of it for quick
shading in. There are a range of drawing pastel and charcoal based materials ranging from willow
stick charcoal and white chalk pastel drawing sets. There are a range of compressed chalk pastel
drawing sticks or bars but avoid colour sets since our preoccupation is with tone. Some sets might
have different earth tones, which is OK, but important thing is that they should have dark, mid-tone
and light.
Graphite based, chalk based and charcoal based materials often have different binders so won’t all
work that well with each other. You can try out different drawing materials in the shop to see if they
combine.
You will need at least one putty rubber for lifting off charcoal and a can of fixative so that you can
transport your work without it smudging. Please contact me via coas@cardiffmet.ac.uk before the
course if you are unsure about materials.
Materials
1
Drawing charcoal (natural or compressed)
2
Soft chalk or pastel, white and mid tone grey
3
White cartridge paper (10 A2 sheets), black paper (5 sheets), mid tone (grey) paper (5
sheets) or
A3 heavy weight (170 gsm) spiral bound white cartridge paper sketch book and
A3 pastel paper pad (160 gsm) containing 24 mid tone sheets
4
Charcoal/pastel fixative spray
5
Putty rubber
Bring a packed lunch and a flask too as there will just be a quick stop for lunch as students generally
like to carry on working for as much time as possible.