The kitchen table is our favourite place in the house, and nothing beats sitting down there with a cup of tea or coffee and spending time doing something we love. For lots of us that's doing something creative and if Covid times have had any silver linings, one of the biggest for me has been the explosion in amazing online creative courses. Whatever creative pastime you love or try, there's a zoom course for it. That's pretty brilliant isn't it?
Here are my favourite creative online courses that I've done. Do share yours with us, we want to share the creative love and all the amazing teaching out there!
Only last night I sat down with a cup of tea (Cupsmith's Organic Calm Days, and a couple of squares of dark chocolate - heaven) and spent a really happy couple of hours - the time FLEW by - in the virtual, live company of illustrators Ella Morella and Ruby Wright who showed us how to print your supper! Here's my first attempt that I finished sticking down this morning with a cup of coffee.
The other week I found artist and letterer Lucia of The Wild Ink Workshop and promptly signed up to do her lettering class. And this weekend I'm doing her Mini Map Making course. Just look at the little maps she creates - beautiful! Lucia is a great teacher and at just £15 her courses are brilliant value for money - I plan to work my way through them all.
Mono-printing seems to be a 'thing' for me at the moment as it's something quite substantial but you really can do it at the kitchen table with a cuppa. So I'm spending many evenings working on the techniques I've been learning with lovely Ellie at Surrey Art School as part of her Summer Print Club. We're in the first month of three and have been printing things we've found in nature, starting with leaves and feathers. Ellie is a fabulous teacher, and sitting down for her zoom lessons is a moment of complete 'switch off' and relaxation for me.
I also really enjoyed a Collage Club London evening making a pop-up landscape - I chose the Devon beach and red sandstone cliffs where my father lives and came up with this:
Steph is a great teacher and the time whizzed by. I also have complete colour envy - if you love vibrant colour, Collage Club London is probably right up your street.
My first foray into online creative courses 18 months ago was the BRILLIANT 'Fly Your Freak Flag' with the 3 talented artists and illustrators at The Good Ship Illustration. I can't recommend it highly enough - you have to sign up to join the waiting list for the virtual doors to open on the next course - and over a year on I'm still popping in for their live calls and re-doing their classes because you have lifetime membership. It's more expensive than the others, but you get hours and hours of amazing tutorials, videos and interviews with experts and live calls with Katie, Helen and Tania, so actually I think it's incredible value for money. I really feel I've found 'my virtual tribe' at the Good Ship Illustration and that makes me very happy!
Have you got any great courses you've done or would like to share? Do let us know. Cupsmith is all about creativity - sitting down with a cup of tea, coffee of hot chocolate at your kitchen table and spending some time doing the things you love. So do tell us and we'll help spread the word about all these amazing creatives sharing their talents with us! Pop me an email to emma@cupsmith.com
Happy creating at your kitchen table!
Emma x
