Teaching, in person & online

If 2022 is starting so pleasantly for me, it’s in a big way thanks to teaching. Being able to share my passion with various groups weekly makes me incredibly happy. I love passing on the sense of wonder painting gives me, I love sharing what I know and also -selfishly!- I love being inspired by everyone’s individual take on the world!

All of the above led me to one realisation: I’d be even more delighted to do that more often, more freely and more available to more of you. So I set myself the task to create some online resources later in the year, Ideally by September.

Here I’m writing my first thoughts on what forms that could take and what contents I’d love to offer. Further below there’s a form with a few questions, if you don’t mind taking a moment to share with me your thoughts that would be incredibly useful.

Thanks in advance!

My experience

In London I graduated from a Portraiture Diploma during which I focused for 3 years on the human form, through painting, drawing, etching and sculpture. Before that in France I studied video editing and postproduction and I now see a lot of crossovers with painting: it taught me about composition, light, colour, iterative processes… I also worked in 3D modelling for video games, training my eyes into thinking about planes, structure, and simplifying.

I started teaching in 2018 in Cass Art (Portraiture workshop), at the Mall Galleries (Watercolour workshop) then more regularly from 2020 with Life Drawing classes in Brixton and my first sessions at the Art Academy. After the pandemic I resumed working there more often, as well as at the Dulwich Art Group & School and Lauderdale House (teaching oils, acrylics, watercolour and life drawing). I also have the joy to give private tuition fortnightly, an experience highly gratifying.

I’ve also been given the opportunity to do online sessions for the Art Academy throughout the past year which I’m deeply enjoying: being able to connect to so many of you still blows my mind!

My approach

For me, it’s always been about demystifying the practice. Through looking, we can be in awe instantly; and painting or drawing is helping us in this observation. I think the role of the tutor is to foster the curiosity and joy found in this intense looking while providing concret tools to help you sharpen your experience.

In my own training, I’ve always been fond of mixing my sources, looking at many different ways I could be taught about one component. By this I mean that I will learn concomitantly through exploring with my instincts, understanding in scientific terms, hearing of poetic analogies, copying in literal ways… and so on and so on. I feel that I can never know in advance how best I’ll retain the information, neither which aspect of it will help me best resolve the challenges that I face in the classroom; so having a wide range of approaches gives me all these options. As a tutor, I like to observe the way you instinctively work and suggest tips and techniques that will best suit you.

Experimenting is also key to my practice and my teaching. I love to mix my sources (starting from life, continuing from imagination), to play with mediums (even in what’s forbidden like mixing gouache and oils!); basically to reconnect with the playfulness and freedom children have. For this I know the atmosphere is crucial, from the classroom to the inner self-talk. By sharing my experience I always try to invite you to get more comfortable with the fears and blocks, as they seem to accompany everyone’s practice. I believe the key is to acknowledge the resistance and then to work with and through it.

For me, it does not just happen in the drawing room or on the easel; learning how to look has beneficial effects throughout the rest of the day. It’s helping us connect to the present moment, an invitation to pause and see the world for what it is and not what we assumed it was, to cultivate curiosity and connexions.

I hope that as you read me, you get a sense of how passionate I am! Teaching really reminds me of how much I love painting and drawing, and I truly believe that learning how to look can be transformative in the way we experience life.

So I would love to develop ways to reach more of you, and I think technology gives us opportunities to connect now more than ever.

Personally, online resources were what I started with, with pre-recorded lessons and online exercises. It helped me fall in love with the medium before I was able to commit to in-person sessions. I also really enjoyed tailoring the content to my needs, binging when I wanted or revisiting one class over and over until it clicked. And even while on my Diploma, my biggest breakthroughs came from hearing other painters speak about their practice, whether it was technical advices or them acknowledging the struggles and therefore making me feel less alone in mine.

I’d love to, in turn, create such resources and pass on the passion I received from others!

Online resources to follow at your own pace

I’ll create resources (video, text, audio) that will be yours for life once you’ve purchased them, so you can go through at your own pace and keep coming back to it throughout the years.

They’ll be structured courses going chapter by chapter, opening with the fundamentals of various mediums like drawing, oil and gouache.

Other lessons will encourage you to experiment with various processes to find your own and help you to build a sustained practice. I’ll also be sharing my experience of the professional side of being an artist, from running a business to paying attention to our mindset.

I imagine the courses could be bought individually (i.e. Intro to Drawing; Experimenting with Colour; Building a professional practice) or as packs (with a discount).

Online group classes

And eventually I’d be so happy to set weekly online classes in small groups, or weekend workshops. Because ultimately there’s nothing like working as a group. I believe we progress much faster together; we can get inspired by each other, resonate with feedback given to the other students, learn from everyone’s challenges and solutions, and be reassured that there’s never one right way to go about a project: everyone’s take will be a very precious answer in its own right.

There’s also the benefit of committing to a time in the week, to a group and to ourselves; to compensate for how all too often our individual practice is forced to come last in our busy lives.

Those classes would take place on platform similar to Zoom, but instead of working from a screen I’ll advice you on how to best set up subjects in your own home. We’ll be using the technology to chat and share each other’s work. I’ll be suggesting exercises, giving demos, talking about theory and processes and give feedbacks to you and the group. Across a few weeks or a weekend we’ll go through a structured progression, starting from the basics of one medium or focusing on one particular component like colour or composition.

I’d also love to work with the talented life model our community is lucky to have, which could take the shape of themed ‘drop-in’ sessions. Keeping the groups small, I’ll suggest exercises, share ideas and tips on the subject and give individual feedback.

1 to 1 coaching

I’ll also be offering coaching sessions, 1 to 1 video call, either to accompany you as you follow the courses presented above, or independently. Sharing pictures by emails and calling each other for half an hour or more, it could be for technical feedback or more general guidance.

This could be a one-off of if you want feedback on your portfolio, if you are encountering some challenges with a medium, if you’re feeling stuck in your practice or have a specific question you’d like advice for.

It could also be scheduled with some regularity (every week, every month or a few times in the year) to give us time to reflect on your practice, talk through your challenges but also pin point your strengths, set goals and exercises. Similar to a Personal Trainer supporting you on your journey.

I hope them to be flexible and tailored to your need. Just as any relation is different, it’ll be up to us to see how best to help you with those coaching sessions.

Content

At the moment I’m imagining offering courses:

• Introducing each medium (oils, gouache & watercolour, drawing)

• Going in depth through a particular component (colour, composition, mark making)

• Focusing on subject matter (ie portrait, still life, landscape, working from imagination)

• Offering guidance on the professional side of one’s practice

• and Life Drawing sessions

The above is simply what I love to talk about! They would be released over time and I’ll keep adjusting them to your feedback and demands.

My aim is to give you tools to progress in your ability to see and to depict what you see; as well as encouraging you to build confidence in your practice, to experiment and discover what it is that moves you (what some people call ‘style’, the ability to connect to your personal sensitivity).