Workshop: Develop your Sketchbook Practice

In an age where AI can generate images in seconds, a sketchbook remains one of the most powerful creative tools: an analogue space to think, test and develop your ideas. Join us for a two-day workshop exploring a range of techniques and ways of seeing to record and develop your creative thinking, led by Trevor Flynn and Peter Ayres. What to expect Embrace the habit of using a sketchbook as a tool to visualise, document and develop your ideas, enhancing your creative practice. Over two days, you will dip into three interconnected approaches to sketching, and learn techniques you can develop at your own pace to strengthen your drawing facility. You will also explore how sketching and visual diarising can be embedded in your daily or weekly routine within tight time constraints. Observe Working with photographic source material and objects from the Design Museum’s collection, you will be encouraged to look at the things around you with fresh eyes, analysing natural and man-made form through line, tone and texture. The session will progress to exercises that reveal the underlying structure of objects and spaces, before moving on to analysing three-dimensional forms through isometric sketching. Imagine Learn visualisation processes for creating sketch-notes, diagrams and visual diaries. Using simple pen and tracing techniques, you will layer images to communicate processes and stories, drawing on contemporary and historical examples to inspire and support your journey. Invent Through speed-sketching exercises designed to stimulate your mind’s eye, you will create a set of small images that we will storyboard to make time-based narratives, showing how imagination can be a source of new ideas. Join the course if you are looking to be part of an engaged group of people exploring ways to sketch ideas, developing new habits of seeing and recording thoughts, and seeking a fun, absorbing experience. You will leave with a renewed appetite to sketch, a range of strategies to help you develop a sketchbook habit, and a small set of worksheets to support your practice after the course.