In this 2-day creative crash course, you will explore different ways of starting a drawing, the essentials of drawing features of the face and the importance of light and shadow, taking your cue from a clothed artists' model.

The session is designed to be friendly, welcoming, and informal, with tuition by award-winning artist Jonny Kemp, who appeared on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2023.

Sunday, 30th March 2025 | 10 - 12 pm

• Warm-up

• Use guidelines to get the correct angles and measurements

• Sculpt features by looking at the planes of the face

• Create a long portrait by the end of the session

Sunday, 6th April 2025 | 10 - 12 pm

• Warm-up

• Use tone/lights and darks to create form

• Break down eyes, nose and mouth into simpler shapes

• Create a long portrait by the end of the session

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Drawing materials are provided, but feel free to bring your own.

Personal assistants attend free. Email hello@packedlunch.org for details.

Tea and coffee included.

£42.00

Tickets on Eventbrite

CPAOH Emerging Artists Initiative presents… Jonny Kemp

In 2024, the Crystal Palace Artists’ Open House launched the Emerging Artists Initiative - a programme supporting the next generation of creative talent, a platform for those actively studying (either formally or self-led) for a career in the creative arts. Each selected artist had their application fee waived, materials and framing sponsored and a space provided by a host venue to show their work over both weekends of the open house. In addition, they received an hour’s mentoring, delivered by a professional artist, and the promise of an exhibition in 2025 with charity partner Packed Lunch.

Jonny Kemp was one of the selected artists for the CPAOH Emerging Artists Initiative 2024.

Jonny lives in South East London. Graduating with BA in English in 2011, he worked as an English teacher until July 2023, leaving to pursue a new career as an artist.

Largely self-taught, he managed to take advantage of more time during lockdown to hone his craft. From there, he started to publicise his work online and at local art markets and fairs.

Alike to great literature, he thinks we should be able to see ourselves in painting and drawing. We might not like what we see, but it should be recognisable. For Jonny, the best art casts a sardonic sideways glance at the overlooked banalities of life and asks, “what makes us accept the way things are?”

More recently, he has depicted changemakers fighting for an optimistic, fairer alternative, whose work is often vilified or overlooked. Exploring transcription, such as Renaissance depictions of religious figures, allows him to imbue his subjects with the same symbolism and veneration for people who labour and suffer for their cause.

He has explored the importance of community through his South Drawood exhibition, celebrating the people of South Norwood, London, his local area. These were drawn in his distinctive style of fine liner pen.

In 2023, he was a contestant on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, drawing the BAFTA-winning actor Lenny Rush.

Jonny is now studying for an MA in Fine Art at City and Guilds London School of Art.

www.jonnykempart.co.uk | @jonny_kemp_art

A free exhibition with proceeds from all sales going to the artist’s growth and funding public programmes in advancing and diversifying engagement in visual storytelling.

Exhibition Coming Soon