Beyond the body: From drawing to sculpture summer school
- Wednesday, 2 September 2026
- Thursday, 3 September 2026
- Friday, 4 September 2026
Enrol
| Standard: | £540 |
| Concessions: | £486 |
Please book a ticket to attend this course which will take place in the Roden Centre for Creative Learning.
Suitable for participants aged 18 or over.
Tickets include entry to the National Gallery. Please arrive in good time to access the building and find the event.
Bookings close 10 minutes before the event begins.
Concessions are for full-time students, jobseekers, and disabled adults.
About
Reimagine the human body in this three-day summer school exploring the relationship between clay and drawing.
Be inspired by artists who moved freely between drawing and sculpture in their depictions of the human body, including Michelangelo, Nicolas Poussin, Edgar Degas and Paula Rego. This course treats the body as something imagined as much as observed, shaped by memory, emotion and storytelling as much as anatomy.
Led by artist and educator Jo Conybeare, this course in the Clore Art Studio approaches the body as a process rather than a fixed form. You’ll learn how to move fluidly between drawing and sculpture, constructing and erasing and finished and unfinished forms.
Across the three days, you’ll be led through exercises to help you think about the body with different materials including charcoal, clay, pastel, Conté and oil bar, to experiment with scale, movement, narrative and projection. Working directly from paintings in the Gallery, from images, and from your imagination, the course encourages you to leave space for ambiguity and interpretation, allowing forms to remain open, suggestive and alive.
This summer school is suitable for all levels. No prior experience of sculpture is required. All materials are provided, and your work is yours to take home. Handouts with extra resources will be provided in advance of the sessions.
Suitable for participants aged 18 or over.
Beyond the body: From drawing to sculpture summer school
The first day introduces clay as a drawing tool. You’ll begin with observational drawing in the morning, before moving into playful, exploratory clay work. Using simple armatures, you’ll experiment with form, balance and gesture, thinking about how marks in drawing translate into volume and mass. The emphasis is on process rather than outcome, allowing forms to emerge, collapse and re-form.
Beyond the body: From drawing to sculpture summer school
Day two focuses on addition and change. You’ll return to existing clay forms, adding, reworking and interrupting them, exploring how meaning shifts over time. Working between drawing and sculpture, you’ll investigate the relationship between interior structure and surface, and how unfinished forms can hold as much narrative power as resolved ones.
Beyond the body: From drawing to sculpture summer school
The final day expands the work outward. You’ll experiment with scale, movement and storytelling, using clay alongside pastel, Conté and oil bar. Sculpture becomes a catalyst for drawing, projection and reinterpretation, using light, shadow and surface to extend forms beyond themselves. The day culminates in using sculptural forms to generate drawn narratives, exploring how bodies can suggest stories without fully revealing them.
Your tutor
Joanna Conybeare is an artist and Gallery Educator at the National Gallery. She has led multiple adult courses and has worked in Primary and Secondary schools in London and the south coast as a teacher and subject lead for Art and Design. In her own artistic practice, she uses oil paint, clay, porcelain and terracotta to explore the figure, enjoying the immediacy of the material that enables her to ‘draw’ two and three-dimensionally.