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
- Prostitution in Ancient RomeCourse start date: Tue 4 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Sean GabbThe oldest profession as practised among the Romans - not for the squeamish.Full fee £19.00 Senior fee £19.00 Concession £12.00 - Indigenous Australian art: an introductionCourse start date: Wed 5 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Arjmand AzizIndigenous Australian art has, in recent years, been increasingly exhibited and discussed in Britain. Yet little is known about the history and development of this art movement and the oeuvres of the artists responsible for its creation. This introductory course will provide a history of how Indigenous Australian artists have changed and challenged the course of national and international art fields in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £104.00
- Exploring Kant: the theory of knowledgeCourse start date: Wed 5 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Gabriel Olumide ApataWhat do we know? How do we know it? What are the limits of knowledge? Join this course to explore the area of Kant’s philosophy which focuses on his theory of knowledge.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £97.00 - Renaissance art at the National GalleryCourse start date: Wed 14 May 2025 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Off Site
Tutors: Emma Rose BarberThis course explores the Making, the Locating and the Viewing of Renaissance paintings in the collection of the National Gallery. This course takes place at the National Gallery.Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £103.00 Concession £84.00 - Full fee £499.00 Senior fee £399.00 Concession £324.00
- Business administration with digital skills: how to be an administrator (foundation)Course start date: Wed 5 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Are you a new administrator wanting to develop your skills? Do you want to become an administrator but are unsure what the job entails? Do you need to update your organisational and digital skills for the virtual office? On this course you will learn the essentials of how to be a good administrator whether this is your job or an essential element of your work. You will work on different ways of being organised, how to achieve goals and tasks on time, prioritising and being service-oriented. By the end of this course, you will be confident in your administration skills whatever your environment, face-to-face or online, and that you can deal with administrative complexity, see the bigger picture, be detail-oriented and solve problems calmly.
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 £139.00 Senior fee £111.00 Concession £70.00 - Image and identity: 20th century Chinese art and cinemaCourse start date: Wed 5 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Meitao QuExplore the work of Chinese artists and filmmakers between the turn of the 20th century to the turn of the 21st as they try to make sense of a world caught on the cusp between the old and the new. What place did art and cinema have in socio-political movements, and how did visual culture reflect the hopes and anxieties of the time?Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - ‘Stranger’ Things: Muriel Spark’s ShapeshiftingCourse start date: Wed 5 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Fiona McCullochThis course will introduce and discuss two novels by eminent author, Muriel Spark- Memento Mori (1959) and The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960). Her writing wilfully upends notions of conformity and acts as a disrupter to accepted conventions. Instead, ‘Spark beckons us to encounter the stranger’ (Marilyn Reizbaum). Playfully disrupting passive readers and stretching comfort zones, Spark’s work provides a space to access unaccustomed outlooks that make us rethink our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world. Instead of unconsciously going with the flow, she awakens us to life’s stranger things.Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £129.00 Concession £84.00 - Drawing and painting from the imaginationCourse start date: Thu 6 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Clare Barton-HarveyExplore the richness of the imagination in drawing and painting. Cultivate a range of methods for stimulating and connecting to what inspires you, and ways to express your imagination freely through the medium of acrylic painting and drawing. - Beginning miniature bookbindingCourse start date: Thu 6 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Royston HawardExplore the charm of tiny books in this introduction to miniature bookbinding. You will discover the history and appeal of this unique style and make three adorable miniature books to take home. Suitable for beginners. - Photography in a day: Flash with speedlightCourse start date: Thu 6 Nov 2025 (and 2 other dates)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Matthew WardLighten things up: join this practical course to learn the basics of using flash on camera (speedlights) to enhance your images. Experiment creatively indoors and outdoors with different flash techniques, with a professional photographer on hand to guide you throughout.
Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £129.00 Concession £129.00 - Publish your first book onlineCourse start date: Thu 6 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Hybrid (choose either online or in-person)
Tutors: Christine RobertsonLearn how to publish your first book electronically on the Amazon Kindle and other e-book devices using an existing Word document. You will need good internet and file management skills and experience of using Microsoft Word.Full fee £269.00 Senior fee £215.00 Concession £175.00 - Still life in the history of art: opulence and fragilityCourse start date: Thu 6 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Elizabeth EyresStill-life paintings usually represent ordinary things, often small and arranged on an indoor surface, without human presence. Long regarded in western art as the lowliest subject or “genre”, one that only required technical skill rather than imagination, still lifes are now considered some of the most charming and best loved paintings and can contain intriguing meanings that repay close study.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - 20th to 21st Century War Poetry: British and InternationalCourse start date: Thu 6 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Stephen WinfieldExplore the astonishing range of poetic responses to a hundred years of warfare, acts of witnessing, endurance, defiance and condemnation by writers across the globe: Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in Britain, Brecht, Milosz, Celan, Akhmatova and Stepanova in Europe and Russia, Darwish and Zhadan in the Middle East and Ukraine, and many others. How do they describe the indescribable? High art or doggerel, what does it matter once the bombs start to fall?Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £103.00 Concession £84.00
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