A three-day workshop exploring figures, storytelling and expressive painting Having explored abstracted gardens in our previous workshop, this year we will introduce the human figure into our compositions. A solitary figure among the trees, a presence beside a garden wall or someone glimpsed in the distance can transform a landscape, suggesting an encounter, a memory or a story that remains open to interpretation. Working from sketches, observations and collected visual material, we will experiment with ways to combine figures, landscape and traces of human activity. Through practical exercises and demonstrations, we will explore how composition, colour, simplified forms and expressive marks can create atmosphere and suggest a narrative without describing it too literally. Using the spacious barn as our studio, we will move between drawing, colour studies and exploratory paintings before developing our ideas into more resolved compositions on primed wooden panels.

• Storytelling through landscape: Use figures, buildings and garden structures to suggest stories, mood and mystery.
• Introducing the human figure: Experiment with scale, placement and gesture, exploring how a figure changes our reading of a landscape.
• Composition and drawing: Use sketchbook exercises and tonal studies to explore arrangements of shapes, figures and spaces.
• Colour and atmosphere: Develop expressive palettes inspired by the gardens, from rich greens to muted earth colours and darker, more mysterious tones.
• Expressive mark-making and mixed media: Combine drawing, acrylics, inks, glazes and collage to build layered, textured surfaces.
• Developing a painting: Bring together your discoveries in a more ambitious composition, following the ideas and approaches that interest you most.

We will also look at how contemporary artists use simplified forms, expressive drawing and unexpected combinations of figures and landscape to create paintings that feel poetic, mysterious or quietly unsettling. You will be encouraged to develop your own visual language, leaving room for imagination rather than aiming for a prescribed outcome. Whether you are drawn to the wildness of the gardens, the geometry of their formal spaces or the quieter details of the orangery and kitchen garden, Rode Hall offers an inspiring setting in which to explore the relationship between place, imagination and narrative.
A selection of acrylic paints and inks, gels and glazing mediums, brushes, palette knives, mark-making tools, wooden painting panels, coloured pencils, crayons, paint markers and collage materials. You will need to bring

• Your own acrylic paints and painting kit
• Your paint brushes
• A sketchbook and white cartridge paper
• Drawing materials, including pencils and both willow and compressed charcoal
• Any coloured crayons you may have including  pencils or pastels, such as Stabilo Woody or Caran d’Ache Neocolour crayons.
• Coloured paint markers, if you have them
• A drawing board to rest your paper on
• A potable stool for sitting and working in the garden
• Scissors, a glue stick and a craft knife
• Any photographs, sketches or other source material you would like to draw upon
• There is plenty of space in the barn for you to bring an easel if you prefer to work standing up.