Sketchbook Saturday: Mindful Pauses

Karly Allen facilitates this online event for The National Gallery

Sketchbook Saturdays are morning-long creative sessions with the aim of exploring the various ways in which artists have approached their own image making.

Suitable for beginners, as well as those wanting to improve their current skills, each month we explore a particular theme or subject through practical activities based upon the art and artists found in our collection.

From drawing techniques and materials, to the ways that artists today have taken inspiration from the past, develop your own toolkit of ideas for making art at home.

Take a mindful approach to looking and drawing, in this session led by Karly Allen. Starting with a short mindfulness practice, you’ll be guided to notice the gaps in between shapes in paintings, where we experience a visual pause. Making drawings to explore and expand these spaces, we’ll take mindful pauses to encourage a greater sense of ease and connection as we draw. Suitable for all, no previous experience of mindfulness needed.

 

Slow Art Day at Pallant House, Chichester

This event is cancelled.

Join us on International Slow Art Day for an introduction to drawing and the art of mindfulness. An opportunity to explore the beauty and simplicity of the ancient practice of mindfulness in the context of drawing. Explore how drawing can be both playful and enriching, and how it can support a deepening engagement with artworks in our collection. A practical drawing workshop, incorporating a range of mindfulness and drawing approaches.

Mindful Life Drawing at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery

Life drawing is the ordinary and yet extraordinary encounter with the naked human body: a familiar subject seen in a new light. This workshop explores life drawing as an opportunity to cultivate mindfulness – the practice of being fully present in our moment-by-moment experience – by giving our full and kind attention to the living body. The morning includes an introduction to mindfulness, short guided meditations and mindful drawing exercises, to cultivate ‘beginners mind’ and an open space for creativity. Led by Karly Allen from Limina Collective with expert life model Marinella Mezzanotte. All materials and tea/coffee provided. No previous experience of mindfulness or drawing is required. Tickets are £35/£23 concessions.

Mindful drawing at the British Museum, session 2

An informal & practical workshop exploring drawing and mindfulness in the context of inspiring drawings by Kathe Kollwitz in Room 90.

During the workshop you will receive an introduction to mindfulness and explore how engaging mindfulness with looking and drawing artworks, can support a more enriched experience of the artwork itself as well as relaxation and well-being.

Led by Clare Barton-Harvey.

Clare Barton-Harvey is an artist, tutor and freelance workshop leader. She has been practising mindfulness for over 25 years and has been teaching drawing and mindfulness courses and workshops for over 15 years. Clare received BA (Hons) Fine Art in 1998, and in 2003 she studied drawing, to MA level, at the Royal Drawing School. She trained with Breathworks mindfulness teacher training in 2006-7 and has devised numerous workshops, courses and retreats exploring the relationship of mindfulness, the imagination and drawing. Clare is a co-founder of LIMINA collective who specialise in bringing together art and audiences through mindful engagement and she currently works at the City Literary Institute and as a freelance workshop leader in a variety of locations including The National Gallery, British Library, Pallant House Gallery and Hampton Court Palace, where she engages mindfulness and drawing as a tool for a more enriched visitor experience of the history and context of place and fine art/museum collections. Clare is fascinated by the relationship between mindfulness and creativity and is a playful and engaging communicator/workshop leader.

Age: 18+