Drawing: Ideas Into Images

A good idea is still just an idea until you draw it.

About This Course

Up to now, drawing has mostly meant translating what's already there. This course flips it. Starting with an idea, and using drawing to work out how to show it. Composition, invention, and the discipline of deciding what actually belongs in the frame.

What You'll Create

  • A folio of sketches and thumbnails showing the development of an idea.
  • One finished, resolved image selected for the end of term exhibition.
  • A brief written statement on the idea and the choices behind the final image.

Course Details

Age Range
12-14
Term
Term 1
Schedule
Wednesdays, 4:00pm
Duration
10 weeks
Price
$480
Spots Available
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What You'll Learn

  • • You'll come up with more than one idea before picking one.
  • • You'll control what a viewer notices first, through composition.
  • • You'll invent a scene instead of just copying one.
  • • You'll learn that a bad thumbnail is cheap and a bad final piece is expensive.
  • • You'll learn to notice the moment an idea is actually resolved, not just finished.

The Support You'll Get

You won't be handed the answer. You'll be shown how to find it.

Your practitioner has spent years making their own work, and their own mistakes. In the studio they work alongside you: asking the right questions, pointing out options you hadn't seen, helping you push through the moment you get stuck. The ideas stay yours. The decisions stay yours. They're there so you're never finding the way through alone.

Week by Week

Week 1: Where images come from. Invention, not just observation. Idea generation, getting past the first, obvious idea.

Week 2: Thumbnails. Sketching small before working big.

Week 3: Composition. Where things sit, and why it matters.

Week 4: Inventing a setting from imagination and reference.

Week 5: Combining more than one idea into a single image.

Week 6: Getting feedback and reworking a piece.

Week 7: A second image, same idea, different approach. Choosing the stronger of the two.

Week 8: Exhibition. Public showing, families attend.

Every course ends with an exhibition

Celebrate what you created with the people and our community. Every term concludes with a presentation or exhibition of your work: a chance to share your process, your ideas, and what you've made.

Your Instructor

Charlotte Lance

Charlotte Lance

Author & Illustrator

Charlotte has illustrated and written children's books published by Penguin, Pan Macmillan, Allen & Unwin and Scholastic. Her work includes A Really Super Hero, This Girl, That Girl, and Moth in a Fancy Cardigan. She builds worlds that hold stories within stories, working across traditional and digital media. She teaches the way she works: look closely, draw what's actually there, then make it yours.

Ready to start?