Online Class: Contour & Gesture Drawing: Botanicals

Join us for a focused practice of observational nature drawing with sinuous lines, inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s botanical drawings. Through interactive hands-on demos and step-by-step instructions, teaching artist Sudeshna Sengupta will teach you how to capture the beauty of plants and leaves using expressive gestural strokes and descriptive contour lines with a hint of tonal shading for depth and dimensionality. Students are welcome to gather their own houseplants, leaves, buds, or flowers to reference during the class, or they can draw from the examples used by the instructor in the live demonstration.

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This class is suitable for youth ages 12 and up. Children are welcome to participate alongside their adults.

Space is limited, reservations required.

This program will take place via the video conferencing app – ZOOM. Details for accessing the Zoom meeting will be with your receipt upon registering and again sent via email the day prior. Please register in advance in order to access the program. Note that all program times are in Mountain Time.

Online classes are not recorded. Online classes are offered only as a live and interactive

Supplies needed for the class: 

• Strathmore 400 series Mixed-media drawing pad or any other brand of drawing pad in any size between 9” x 12” and 12” x 17”. Thicker paper (140 lb or higher) is better.
• A set of 2B, 4B, & 6B graphite pencils and an eraser
• Charcoal Pencils: Medium (2B) and Soft/Dark (4B or 6B),
• Blending stumps (AKA Tortillons, often comes with drawing pencil sets) and or Qtips and tissues or cotton rags (clean pieces of old t-shirts work well).
• Masking tape to keep the paper flat especially is the pad is larger.
• Optional: Newsprint pad for practice drawing, a couple of sticks of Vine Charcoal for larger drawings, if anyone would like to try drawing on a larger pad, colored pencils or conte if anyone wants to add a hint of color.

About the Instructor:

Sudeshna Sengupta’s career as a teaching artist spans multiple decades, continents, and cultures that inform her pedagogy for decolonizing studio art. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1985 from Visva-Bharati, an international university founded in India, by the humanist poet Tagore, the first non-European Nobel Laureate (1913). After teaching art and design at the college level in New Delhi, Seattle, and California, she taught at NMSU-Alamogordo, where she established its first intaglio printmaking studio in 1995. Since moving to Santa Fe a few years ago, she has been teaching credit courses in online studio art at the Santa Fe Community College. Her etching prints are in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Association Musée d’Art Contemporain, France; Kala Institute, Berkeley; Artists Trust, Seattle, Chandigarh Govt. Art Museum, India, Gerald Champion Memorial Hospital, NM, and more. Her etchings and lithographs from the permanent collection of the NGMA have been featured in a major exhibition on Women Printmakers of India in 2024 at NGMA, New Delhi. She also conducts workshops and short courses and presents lectures and community-based art events for various age groups with civic, cultural, and community organizations in the US and in India, often with a focus on multicultural and intercultural experiences that emphasize human, cultural, and environmental connectedness through creativity. To see her art please visit: @santafe_online_art_studio on Instagram and notes-and-doodles.com

This class is being offered on a sliding scale.

$10 minimal fee.

$20 covers the cost of the class.

$30 covers the cost of the class, plus a contribution to support educational programs.