A short fun and easy course, exploring Animal forms (land mammals), their character, expressions and anatomy

Consideration of drawings and images to help with proportion and calculating scale dimensions. Practice building individual facial features; the eye, nose, mouth, etc.

Understand the importance of surface and underlying landscapes including muscle, bone structure, hair and other textural definitions. By focusing on a particular form, perhaps a bear or cat, the tutor will step-by-step guide you through the following with a fun and relaxed approach:

• Creating a hollow three-dimensional figure using slab building, manipulating, adding and subtracting clay.
• Understand the importance of movement, finish, balance and thickness of form.
• Discuss the use of props, plinths and hollowing during construction.
• Explore the importance of clay type, evenness, supports and maintaining a constant environment to prevent cracking and structural weakness. Also, the idea of functionality and mixing medias.

At the end of the course, you will have a selection of pieces; a small, seated figure, facial features, and a small completed form (25cm max), that will be fired for you and ready for collection about 3 weeks after the course ends. These will be a decorative and a useful ‘body’ of work for reference, together with notes (bring a notebook!) and observations you make during the course to move forward onto more ambitious projects in the future.

This course is open to adults (16+). The cost includes instruction and the items you make to take home. Refreshments and drinks are also included.

This course is led by Helen Ashton