Drawing Meets Print
Reflections on Getting Lost at DRAW Summer School 2026
Unbounded:
4-7 August 2026 with Jenny Purrett & Fran Arnold
“A wood is…where you travel to find yourself, often paradoxically, by getting lost”
Tuesday was overcast
Rain clouded the horizon as I drove along the A69, windscreen wipers wagging at half-obscured views of the Tyne Valley ahead of me
Not the start to drawing outdoors, amongst the trees, at Wheelbirks Farm that Jenny & I had envisaged - change seemed inevitable!
Yet the rain and cloud cocooned us, a group of avid drawers embarking on print together, making a start in the peace of the orchard. Not a soul to disturb us.
A morning’s deep immersion in looking and mark making
The studio filled with concertina sketchbooks on our return; lines marking memories of a place, images real yet imagined jostling on each page
Over four days, drawings appeared and disappeared as prints came to life through collaborative, large scale images and tiny solo endeavours
Jenny and I led demos in monotype and Tetrapak print techniques, set rules (inevitably to be broken!) and removed them, and channelled our inner print technicians
We held 1-1 conversations that unlocked big ideas, soon tested out in the abundance of drawing & print materials at DRAW Studio
The energy in the room was palpable. Experimentation abound
Playfulness, curiosity; getting lost in the act of doing
Not a day went by without huge volumes of work appearing on the walls and hung from the beams above us
No failures, no mistakes
Only opportunities to play, do, learn and re-make unique prints
We revelled in the surprises we found in miniature Tetrapaks; inked, printed & re-inked many times over and shared a childish delight in lifting paper from the press to reveal inky prints
On Friday, conversations flowed over ice creams as we stood back to enjoy collaborative monotypes hung from the rafters and individual prints collected across the walls
A joyful celebration of getting lost,
of drawing into print, and
of crafting a journey together to (re)invigorate our practices
Watch out for….
prints from the Summer School at DRAW Studio’s 5th birthday party on Saturday 29 August, more collaborative courses run by Jenny and I,
and a group of drawers making their mark in the world of print!
Join a Drawing Workshop This Autumn!
Windowscapes
24 October, 10am - 4pm
Newcastle Arts Centre