Join professional landscape artist Deborah Frank, recent semi-finalist on Sky Landscape Artist of the Year 2026, for Landscape Drawing Club in August.

This outdoor drawing session will focus on the art of drawing trees. Inspired by the shifting light in the Gallery’s High Wood Epping Forest watercolour, participants will develop an understanding of tonal values using toned paper, while learning how to group and simplify the complex forms of trunks, branches, and foliage.

Through graphite and ink, this workshop develops the learner’s use of mark-making to address the weight and movement of trees within a landscape. Participants will draw en plein air, directly from observation, to create three varied tree studies. They will be encouraged to make bold marks that explore the stillness, movement, and life of trees as they hold their space within the land.

Deborah’s strong sense of expressive and directional mark-making will guide you through the process, helping you capture the character, movement, and rhythm of trees in Lloyds Park.

This is a workshop for adult learners and is suitable for beginners.

About the artist

Deborah Frank explores the materiality of paint and its application. Her practice centres on cultivated landscapes and suburban spaces, examining the physical actions and rhythms shared by both artist and land workers. Through expressive brushwork and mark-making, her paintings evoke atmospheric weather conditions while narrating the presence of the figure within the landscape.

About this workshop series

Landscape Drawing Club is a series of artist-led outdoor workshops inspired by William Morris’s belief in close observation of the natural world. Participants explore en plein air drawing, learning to observe and capture the landscape directly from life. Each session is shaped by landscape works from the Gallery’s permanent collection, using these as creative starting points while offering insight into how historic landscapes continue to inform contemporary practice.

What does ‘en plein air’ mean?

It is a term commonly used in art to describe painting or drawing outdoors, directly from the landscape, rather than working in a studio. The approach became popular with Impressionist artists like Monet, who wanted to capture natural light and atmosphere on location.