Join award-winning artist Wendy Barratt in this full day workshop and learn useful strategies to capture the human figure. Working from a life model, you will explore drawing techniques through a series of exercises guided by Wendy, that will help you in developing ideas about how to describe shape and form through mark-making.
Looking to Barbara Hepworth’s general practice for inspiration, you will work with pencil and pastel to bring your drawings to life. Learn to translate and condense three-dimensional forms into a two-dimensional artwork, using elements such as form and light. Wendy will guide you throughout, sharing how colour and mark making can convey movement, mood and emotion, and add depth to your drawing.
During the day, you will have the opportunity to visit the Barbara Hepworth and Greece exhibition, to explore the ways Hepworth has represented form in both her sculptural and glazed pieces.
Suitable for all levels, including complete beginners, this workshop offers a supportive and exploratory environment. By the end of the session, you will have produced a series of studies and a finished Barbara Hepworth inspired figure drawing to take home.
Wendy Barratt
Wendy Barratt is an artist who is fascinated with representing the human body – both in portraiture and life drawing. Her portraiture is made primarily in oil paint whereas life drawing becomes an experiment in mostly dry media. She is the winner of Sky Portrait Artist of the Year 2023.
She studied graphic design in Manchester back in the early 80s and has been working ever since as a designer, until a few years ago when she launched herself as a full-time artist. Throughout her career, she has spent a lot of her spare time in the life room honing her artistic skills as well as passing on her love of drawing and painting onto others through teaching.
Recently she has seen her paintings accepted for the Royal Society of Portrait Painters annual exhibition as well as having work exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery. Commissions include large portraits which were used as major props for the ITV Crime Drama series The Long Call. Wendy is a member of the Contemporary British Portrait Painters and her self-portrait was selected for the Herbert Smith Freehills Painting award show at the National Portrait Gallery in 2024.
