Face-to-face teaching

Portrait Head and Expression: Sculpture Master Class, Morley College, London

Four day Easter school: 2 April 2024 – 5 April 2024, 11-5pm, £265 (£200 concessions)

Fired clay sculpture of Daniel Marcus Clarke, with his eyes closedAre your portraits feeling staid? Do you want to learn techniques to capture more character and expression? This four-day course combines a study of one long life-size head pose across the four days, with smaller, quicker expressive portrait exercises. Learn and develop observation skills, clay modelling, and individual approach focusing on achieving expression in a portrait head in clay. All levels, including beginners. Basic materials included, but extra charge for materials used over £8 materials’ fee.

For further details and to book, see the Morley College website here

Portrait Head in Clay, Art Junction, Billingshurst

Five days: Monday 2 to Friday 26 July 2023, 10-4pm each day, £470

Have you ever wanted to capture someone’s face or expression in a sculpture? Working a portrait in clay from a live model is a really rewarding experience. This course will explore how to observe heads – how to see their differences and similarities, and in turn learn how to translate this understanding into a sculpture which captures a likeness of the sitter. During the five days a life-sized clay portrait of a live sitter will be built on an armature. This concentrated modelling will be interspersed with fun exercises – with clay and without – to help train up the eye and hands. This course will be taught in a way suitable for those with experience of sculpting in clay and those new to it. There will be an opportunity to hollow-out the heads after the course, for an additional fee. The studios are by the platform of Billingshurst station (on the London Victoria line).

Note that we have also booked this course for 5 Saturdays (Oct 12 to Nov 9, 2024)

Book here.

Expressive Portrait Workshop, Art Junction, Billingshurst

Weekend: Saturday 3 & Sunday 4 August 2024; 10-4pm each day, £250

This two-day workshop, with  different model each day, will enable you to exploit the expressive nature of clay. You will get expression, character, emotion and movement in your sculptures. We will use exercises, with and without clay, to build our understanding of how to inject expression into our portraits. You will sculpt a series of smaller, quick portraits (sometimes with the torso) with potentially longer-poses on the afternoon of the second day, producing under-life size portraits. This 2-day course will particularly benefit those with some experience of portrait sculpture.

Book here.

Portrait Head in Clay, Art Junction, Billingshurst

Five Saturdays: Saturday 12 Oct to Saturday 9 Nov, 2024, 10-4pm each day, £470

For details and booking see above. This is a repeat of the summer school course, but on Saturdays.

One-to-one mentoring

Whether you need advice on your first clay portrait head or need guidance and support as you tackle the journey towards becoming a professional sculptor, I can be there for you. It could be a one-off session or on-going support, face-to-face or online. Email me for further details.