Founded in 2000 by HRH The Prince of Wales, the Prince's Drawing School is an independent educational organisation for artists to broaden and extend their drawing practice. It is unique in the UK for its focus on drawing.

Teaching is based on drawing by observation as an expression of vision and understanding, rather than simply description or copying, so there is no house style.

Based in a specially converted warehouse in Shoreditch (19-22 Charlotte Road), the studio is used six days a week, primarily for life drawing. 'Out of house' courses include drawing the national collections, using the Royal Academy's Life Room and drawing outside during the summer school.

Our faculty of 40 artists and Advisory Board is made up of some of the UK's most distinguished art tutors and in a typical week over 350 artists attend our classes and lectures.

To make the School accessible to artists, courses are subsidised thanks to the generosity of our donors and sponsors. Some special events are free, such as the annual Drawing Marathon and local community programmes.

As a centre for excellence in drawing, the Prince's Drawing School in 2001 established a specialist course at MA level for figurative artists, called the Drawing Year. It is designed to offer support, both financial and cultural, for artists wishing to focus on drawing by observation.

There are eighteen students whose work is exhibited and who have just finished the Drawing Year 2002/03. There were 150 applications, next year there are twenty-five students and 200 people applied. Each student has their own experience of the Drawing Year as they pick the courses they wish to attend from the public programme of the School, as well as having special tutorials and trips.

Students of the Drawing Year and alumni win art awards, are taken on by commercial galleries, curate their own shows or further their studies at institutions such as the Royal College of Art.

Gregory Smart, Drawing Year student, says: 'Through the teaching at the Prince's Drawing School, I have discovered the voice to make my own art. At the studio I began to look and think about what and how and why I was drawing. The more I began to draw the more I was able to see.'

 

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