Hi! I'm Ella Beech, a children's book author and illustrator living in Cambridge UK. In 2019, after over 20 years working in Children’s Publishing as a Designer and Art Director I realised I wanted to follow my lifelong dream to become an artist and illustrator. I quit my job, enrolled on the MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art, and immersed myself in a brand new creative practice. Since then I have graduated, and illustrated three books, with The Folio Society, Wide Eyed Editions and Thames and Hudson. I also teach on the MA now part-time as an associate lecturer.
Art Club is a monthly online meet-up specially designed to help you let go of your logical thinking brain and to make some intuitive, playful and free-flowing art. Each month I choose a theme (some months I keep it loose, sometimes quite specific) and I lead you through an hour-long art-making session on Zoom. All recordings are available as replays.
Hello to you all! I am writing this the morning of Art Club - sorry about that. I decided I would squeeze a month’s worth of my Substack into about 10 days, and so I keep running out of time. But, I’m glad to be running things still, despite it being a bit squished together. Picture Book Club last night was great, and we had a little chat about books we saw in Bologna at the end which was fun. I’m just saving the replay and will post it asap. In the meantime, I am writing to you with details for today’s Art Club. It’s going to be exciting, because I am cycling into college right after writing this to have the first marking meeting, and then I will be rushing back to start Art Club at 12.30! I will attach the picture we’ll draw from to this post, as that gives you more of a chance to download and print or get it ready to draw from, and means we can get straight into the drawing when we start.
OK, so here are all the details you need:
WHEN?
TODAY (Thursday 25th April, 12.20-1.30 pm BST. Here is a handy timezone converter for your timezone.
WHERE
Zoom link below (for paid subscribers)
THEME?
I was massively inspired by all the statues I saw in Italy, I just love statues, I even wrote one of my books about statues that come to life on the MA. So I thought it would be fun to draw the fountain of Neptune today.
These are some of the statues I drew in Italy, although I’m planning on adding some colour today!
MATERIALS:
Bring along what you want, but here is a suggested list, to help prompt you:
- paper - ideally A3 or bigger
- art materials - I like to think in wash, pop of colour, tone. So you could bring some paint or ink to add washes of colour, crayons, oil pastels, pencil, marker pen, paint pens neocolout etc for pops of colour, and charcoal, ink, paint, in gray, black or paynes grey to add tone (if you want).
HOW:
I generally begin with a warm-up, to get you loose, and help you tap out of your thinking logical brain and working a bit more intuitively. I then begin work with the camera focused above my paper, talking you through my own experiments, which you can either join along with or go off-piste in your own direction.
That’s it! Zoom link and pictures below for paid subscribers!
Ella xx
You need to be a paid subscriber to attend Art Club. You can join for £4.50 per month, or £45 per year. That is like having one fancy coffee per month, and for that, as well as access to Art Club, you can come to my Picture Book Club meet-up, and get access to my full back catalogue of videos!