It’s wonderful to have 5 whole days to play with. Exploration with materials and experimentation on both white and coloured grounds, with inks, and gouache and collage and salt will set us off for the week and give each of you a wonderful variety of expressive and textured coloured backgrounds to choose from as we sketch each day. Teaching will be sequential with our mornings classroom-based. Afternoons will be outdoors with a starter demo from Pat and a chance to put the morning’s learnings into practice, sketching individually with her support. At afternoon’s end it’ll be back to the classroom for throw-down, discussion a little finishing off and lettering : a title and text. ( + Handouts from Pat, of course)

Skills and confidence will build as the week progresses. Sketch subjects/locations and tasks will begin simply and grow each day. Everyone will have a tester strip, the same as their background to try colours and lines and blending on, as they work. And throughout it all, Pat will encourage you to look, look, look…see with different eyes, search out the special details and make these count; and stop rather than draw every tile, every brick. “Leave space”, she will urge “ give your sketch breath” and “vary your line, FEEL it…to bring energy”. One of her favourite sayings is “Draw with a butterfly’s wing touch. FEEL the line. Let your hand just trail across the paper” Another is  “Press on HARD…. then trail off. For true intense colours you need to press on”. Pat works with all manner of drawing tools and you will too!

And for those of you who have a tablet with Procreate and Apple Pencil, and bring it with you, Pat will slip in a digital evening, too, importing backgrounds and sketches into Procreate and adding to these. It’s something she enjoys doing and is happy to share at Bar Harbor…a first, just for us! It’ll be life-changing and you’ll go away fired up. Join us!