how it started in Stratford:
When I started Makings & Musings all my art classes took place in person. For those of you who have been with me from the start, you probably remember how I set up my creative studio in the Escape bar and how I pinned my painting to the wall. You may have seen me dragging bags full of materials on the back of my bicycle through London.
When we went online:
With the arrival of lockdown I swiftly brought all my art classes online. It was a scary and intense period full of uncertainty. Looking back on those first video's it feel a little crinch but also proud of how far I have come. My camera, light, sound and yes, also my art has improved a lot over the years! drawing and painting live whilst teaching was new to me and I had to get comfortable with people seeing every mistake fast!
Four classes a week:
Until not so long ago I was running five live art classes over zoom each week. Two charcoal drawing sessions, two watercolour painting sessions and a pen drawing class each week.
Why change from live classes to online courses?
Doing all these live art sessions took a lot of time and I always have to be home to run them. Hosting online art courses gives me much more flexibility. To explore new creative topics, teach a new art material, host longer or shorter painting courses and I can experiment with drawing live sessions and video recordings.
What I did realise fast that I missed the interaction with my creative makers when I am only share recorded video's which is why at the moment all my art courses have live sessions too.
I can also take a break for a few weeks in between drawing courses, film on painting location, ask other artists to teach a session in an art course or switch things up in other ways.
I am learning more about story telling, video editing and people can purchase my courses long after the date I created them. I hope my courses help everyone find their own creativity more than copying my exact strokes does too.
all in all there are lots of positive aspects to running a course over a weekly class (that follows the same format every time).
At the moment the only weekly class I have kept is the Sunday charcoal class, where we draw a different subject in charcoal together every week. The class started as a beginners class and although most of the participants now have more experience, beginning artists are still very welcome too!
you can find it here.
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