The Best of the Drawing Year at Christies

Every year, I make a point of going to see The Royal Drawing School's "The Best of the Drawing Year" at the annual exhibition at Christies at King Street in London.

I went this afternoon to see the 2024 exhibition.

View of one end of the exhibition on the ground floor at Christies

That's partly because when I first retired, I enrolled in classes at what was then called The Prince's Drawing School between 2005 and 2008.  You can see what I did by reviewing my blog posts back then which are labelled "Drawing a Head"

It's also because 

• I've encountered many of the alumni of The Drawing Year winning prestigious art competitions eg 
• Kathryn Maple (Sunday Times Watercolour Competition - twice and the John Moores Painting Prize) and 
• Clara Drummond (BP Portrait Award 2016)
• plus - last week - two alumni appeared in Episode 5 of this year's PAOTY.

Finally it's because it's always a very good show with lots of people finding really interesting ways to make drawings - using a variety of dry media on a variety of surfaces..

For example, this year, they seem to be rather interested in coloured pencils - but the drawings in coloured pencil that I saw are nothing like the artwork I see in for example the UKCPS Annual Exhibition.

I'm going to upload my pics to an album on my Facebook Page - but that might have to wait until tomorrow - because I need to make dinner before PAOTY Episode 6 starts!

The Best of the Drawing Year

Entrance to the exhibition

This is a selling exhibition of drawings, prints and works on paper from students graduating from the Royal Drawing School’s postgraduate programme, The Drawing Year 2024 at Christie’s, London.

It's on from today until Sunday 17 November 2024 and it's FREE admission! It's open every day between 9am and 5pm on weekdays and between 12pm–5pm at the weekend. 

You can find Christies at 8 King St, London SW1Y 6QT (the link is to a google map!). I go to St James Park and the walk across St James's Park to get to King Street - it's very pleasant! It's also near Green Park and Piccadilly tube stations

You can also see the exhibition ONLINE and buy works from 13th November at royaldrawingschoolexhibits.org - and there have already been a number of sales. Some of the young artists are doing really well.

If you can't get to Christies, then come December, there will be an exhibition of a selection of over 500 drawings, prints and works on paper by students graduating from The Drawing Year 2024 postgraduate-level programme in The Drawing Year 2024 End of Year Exhibition which is held at the Royal Drawing School between 4 December 2024 – 19 December 2024

So the current one is "Best of" and the December one is the comprehensive look at artwork produced by this year's Drawing Year Postgraduates.

The Drawing Year

The Drawing Year has changed somewhat since I first knew it. 

I was going through the profiles of those exhibiting at Christies and was very surprised to find that a very significant percentage are now postgraduates who were awarded First Class Honours wherever they graduated in a related subject.  As in "a LOT"!

You can download the Drawing Year Prospectus as a PDF from the Royal Drawing School website.

The really important thing to know is there is nothing else like this course.

• it's about drawing
• it's completely free to qualifying postgraduates who are selected
• some of its ex-students have done really well
• there's quite a few things you can also do afterwards - like residencies overseas.

So if you like drawing, then this is something you really should investigate!