Make Metal Gleam With a Pencil

Shine is really just very confident contrast, and this is the week you get the hang of it. Cups, tins, utensils or a piece of jewellery, all with bright highlights sitting hard against deep darks.

The trick is knowing what to leave white. Once that clicks, metal becomes one of the most satisfying things you can draw.

Suggest the Texture, Don't Draw Every Thread

Draped fabric is a proper drawing lesson in disguise, with folds that fall in ways you can't guess and simply have to observe. Scarves, hats, baskets, knitting and lace are all fair game.

You'll learn to suggest a weave rather than render every strand of it. That restraint is what makes a drawing convincing.

Old Things Are the Best Things to Draw

Old cameras, clocks, record players, sewing tins and a rotary telephone with a curly cord, these are objects with real character. Every dent and worn edge hands you something to draw.

There's a warmth to drawing something with a past. Bring anything from your own cupboard that fits the bill.

Set the Scene Before You Draw It

This is the big preparation week and it changes how you look at everything afterwards. You'll learn how to choose objects that work together, arrange them, light them, and think about the story the group is telling.

One orange against a blue enamel pot can carry a whole picture. Beverley will help you set up something worth drawing.

Bring Something That Means Something

Everyone brings one special object from home, and this is where your final drawing begins. It might be an old teapot, a musical instrument, a favourite pair of shoes, a childhood toy, a family heirloom or a collection of shells.

The only rule is that it matters to you. Objects with a memory attached always make the strongest drawings.

Finish It, Sign It, Frame It

The last session is all about detail, tonal depth, texture and the finishing touches that lift a drawing. You'll keep working on the same piece you began in week nine.

Then you sign it, and Beverley frames it for you. Ten weeks of learning, hanging on your wall.

Pen, pencil and a bird who knows he's being drawn

We'll start with graphite and pen together, which is what the whole term is really about. The gull is soft pencil, smooth and rounded, and the post underneath him is pen, all hard edges and hatched grain with a rope wound round it. Putting the two side by side shows you what each one is for.

A good first week. You'll go home with something finished.

Six stones, one pen, and nothing but hatching

No shading with the side of a pencil this week, only lines. You'll learn to build every shadow out of hatching and cross-hatching, packing the strokes tighter where the stone turns away from the light and letting them thin out on top. Each stone becomes a small lesson in form.

It's slow, absorbing work, and very hard to stop once you're in.

Spray, rocks and a lighthouse in graphite

A big scene with a lot going on, so we'll break it into parts. The lighthouse comes first, drawn carefully with a sharp pencil, then the rocks in rough dark scribbles, then the sea, which is mostly left white with a few dark strokes to make the spray fly.

The gulls go in last with two or three lines each. They're what make it feel windy.

A lion that comes out of the smudge

Charcoal on its own now, and used the messy way. You'll rub a big cloud of grey onto the paper first, then pull the lion's face out of it with an eraser for the light and a charcoal stick for the dark. The mane is almost all smudge, and the eyes and nose are the only places you'll draw a proper line.

A cup, a cloth and a curl of steam

A classic still life in graphite, and a lesson in looking. The cup is simple enough, but the cloth under it is where you'll learn to follow folds with your hatching so the fabric looks soft and heavy. The hatched wall behind pushes everything forward.

Three strokes of steam at the end and the coffee is hot.

Big, loose and drawn with the whole arm

This elephant is drawn fast, with long sweeping strokes and a lot of energy, and that's the skill this week. You'll work standing if you like, laying the charcoal on in broad slabs and then scratching the detail of the eye, the tusk and the wrinkled trunk back into it. Most of the body is suggestion rather than drawing.

It will look nothing like a careful drawing, and that's the point.

Rigging, sails and a sea gone wild

The most dramatic picture of the term, and easier than it looks once you see how it's built. The ship is a few strong lines for the hull and masts, with the rigging scratched over the top in fine pen. Then the sea, in charcoal, dark and heaving, with the spray lifted out white.

Keep the sky rough and streaky. A storm shouldn't look tidy.

Sheets on the line and a cat keeping watch

A pen and ink drawing full of everyday life. The sheets teach you to draw cloth hanging under its own weight, with just enough hatching to show the folds and plenty of white left alone. The basket is a quick exercise in weave.

Then one solid black cat, sitting with its back to you, and the whole picture has a story.

A white owl in a black wood

Here you'll draw the dark to find the light. The background goes in first, deep charcoal scrubbed over the whole page, and the owl appears as the white you leave behind and lift out. Speckles on the feathers and two dark eyes finish it.

A quiet, satisfying one. People tend to go very silent in this class.

A chameleon drawn in nothing but loops

We'll end the term by letting go of control. The chameleon is built from thousands of tiny pen scribbles, dense where the body turns into shadow and open where it catches the light, with the tail curling into a spiral of pure line. It takes everything you've learned about tone and throws out the rules about neatness.

The best finishing week there is.