Drawing Courses in London
At City Lit, we have a variety of drawing courses, delivered in our bright, modern studios for students to create and develop a body of drawing work. Supported by our team of experienced and expert tutors, we offer students both a practical guide and an informative insight, providing an opportunity for all levels to explore traditional and contemporary styles of drawing.
We have classes for everyone, whether you’re a complete beginner and you want an introduction to drawing; or you’re at an intermediate or higher level and you want classes that focus on developing advanced drawing skills such as mark making techniques, experimental approaches and use of colour, tone and shade within these disciplines.
Our courses are specially designed to offer you support in overcoming any frustrations, learning new skills and helping you achieve your personal creative goals.
We host exhibitions throughout the year at City Lit Gallery where our students showcase their amazing work.
To arrange a conversation with our drawing coordinator about your interests, options and courses available, please contact our Visual Arts team at visualarts@citylit.ac.uk
- Spanish rápidamente: module 1Course start date: Thu 2 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
This intensive Spanish course is suitable if you already speak a romance language like Italian, French, Portuguese or Romanian, or if you want to learn at a much faster pace. Suitable for beginners. Based on 'Aula Internacional Plus 1' (Nueva Edición, Difusión Publishers).
Please do not buy the book until after the first session, as if you transfer to a regular beginners course you will use a different book.Full fee £259.00 Senior fee £259.00 Concession £168.00 - Shakespeare's Women: Hamlet, Macbeth and As You Like ItCourse start date: Thu 2 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamThis Literature course will look at three of Shakespeare’s female characters: Rosalind (As You Like It), Ophelia (Hamlet) and Lady Macbeth (Macbeth). We will consider their wit, madness and ambition, exploring Shakespeare’s language, the historical context, and the plays in performance.Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £63.00 Concession £51.00 - Queens of Crime: Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. SayersCourse start date: Thu 2 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: William BradyAgatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers dominated the inter-war Golden Age of British detective fiction and continue to this day to beguile and enthral readers with their intricate plotting, fiendish twists and formidable detectives. This course critically explores how both authors shaped the detective genre, the publishing history of some of their most celebrated works, and how Christie and Sayers navigated themes of class, gender, morality and justice. Through selected readings, discussions and analysis, we will explore the literary significance and enduring appeal of these Queens of Crime.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00 - Exploring literature: an introduction to prose and poetryCourse start date: Thu 2 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Kate WilkinsonThis course introduces you to a range of prose and poetry from the nineteenth century to the present. Learn about how poems work, both ‘on the page’ and as spoken words. Reading novels and short stories, we’ll explore characterisation, the social and historical contexts of the works and writers’ techniques. Come and discover what’s distinctive about different forms of literature.Full fee £219.00 Senior fee £175.00 Concession £142.00 - Colour in medieval artCourse start date: Thu 2 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Andreas PetzoldColour is an all pervasive and fundamental aspect of medieval art, but one that is largely neglected in art historical studies.This course looks at some of the main themes relating to colour such as symbolism, materials, theory and key developments.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - 1960s LondonCourse start date: Thu 2 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Blended (learn both online and in-person)
Explore the dynamic history of London in the 1960s. From pop culture to politics, immigration to education we will look at the changing face of the capital through a decade of transformation.
Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £97.00 - Ways into art history: understanding paintingCourse start date: Thu 2 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Elizabeth EyresThis course will provide you with a visual toolkit that will enable you to understand and analyse the appearance of artworks. You will explore their formal qualities, in other words the things that make paintings and sculpture look the way they do. You will discover how an artist gets from a blank canvas, wood panel, sheet of paper to a finished artwork, and the visual decisions that have to be made along the way.
Full fee £259.00 Senior fee £207.00 Concession £168.00 - City Lit contemporary collage projects 1Course start date: Thu 2 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
City Lit contemporary collage projects 1 initiates a year-long set of collage and mixed media projects designed to experiment with and examine the interplay between the two and three dimensions. You will work with a wide range of materials, on and off the wall, extending our pictorial practice into the realm of collage, painting, drawing, assemblage, bricolage, decoupage, photomontage, small scale constructions, printing and text within the context of mixed media.
Note* the course is designed in a way to enable students to either complete all three courses over the year or to come in at any stage in no particular order.Full fee £839.00 Senior fee £671.00 Concession £545.00 - Entry 1 Reading and WritingCourse start date: Thu 1 May 2025 (and 3 other dates)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Do you want to improve your reading and writing skills in English for everyday use? On this course, you will practise your reading and writing skills, but also improve your speaking and listening. Covering different topics such as daily routine, transport, health and shopping, you will practise identifying and reading different texts, writing answers, and asking and answering basic questions in the present simple tense.
This course is FREE if you are employed and on a low wage or you are claiming benefits. For more information Click here
Full fee £149.00 - Black British LiteratureCourse start date: Thu 9 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
From Roman society to the present day, from the memoirs of Equiano to the experimental poetics of Kwesi Johnson, Black British writers have significantly impacted British literature, despite limited recognition.
Through an exploration of social, political and historical contexts, this course examines how diasporic writers decolonised genres and mapped their own metaphors onto the literary landscape.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £179.00 Concession £116.00 - Becoming confident on the cloud: a new way of sharing and managing your files - OneDrive and Google drive (foundation)Course start date: Thu 8 May 2025 (and 2 other dates)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
The digital world is changing from sending emails to sharing files. Attaching files, sending them, downloading them, working on them, saving them, re-attaching and re-sending them is becoming a thing of the past. Instead, with cloud computing, you can share and collaborate on files either at the same time or separately without any emailing or downloading. Join this course and learn how to do this and stay on top of your file management. Learn how to use OneDrive and Google Drive to create, store, share and collaborate on different types of documents on your PC as well as other devices. Discover also how to maintain security while syncing your devices and accounts. By the end of this course, you will have grasped what cloud-computing means and be confident of exploring it further.
This course is FREE if you are employed and on a low wage or you are claiming benefits. For more information Click here
Full fee £109.00 Senior fee £76.00 Concession £55.00 - Night and low light photographyCourse start date: Thu 16 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Jad OakesDiscover how to capture the bright lights of London’s West End after dark. This course will lead you through Piccadilly Circus, the London Eye and Waterloo Bridge and provide feedback on your images in the classroom.Full fee £209.00 Senior fee £167.00 Concession £136.00 - Seeing inside paintingsCourse start date: Thu 16 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Caroline RaeDiscover the secrets of the Old Masters and learn how they created their wonderful effects in this introductory course on painters and painting. We will consider the physical history and scientific examination of artworks in relation to aspects including forgeries, hidden paintings and conservation/ restoration.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £179.00 Concession £116.00
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