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I'm here today in the print room of the Museum in Oxford to introduce to you

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eight drawing classes that are based on the ideas John Ruskin, this

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is a drawing of John Ruskin, put forward in his book, The Elements of Drawing.

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Here I'm surrounded by 20,000 drawings that have been collected by the museum

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during it's history and they date from about 1400 through to the present day.

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The point of these drawings isn't just they should be put on frames and

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hung on walls but that they should be used as a teaching collection and for

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us to learn about drawing and the way people lived in the past.

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Now John Ruskin started an art school here in Oxford in 1871.

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And as a way of putting that art school in motion,

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he brought together a group of several hundred drawings that

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were intended as a model for his students to study from.

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Now the drawing course that I'm going to map out for you.

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We'll, in fact, use many of these drawings as specimens,

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as examples of how to do the exercises.

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So, it is most important, in following this course, that you not only practice,

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practice using materials practice, observing the world and making notes,

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but also that you look at real drawings and see how those drawings were made,

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because we don't draw the way we do today, just because we invented it yesterday.

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It is a very slow and gradual process of society,

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finding ways of making images and developing them on paper.

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So let's start work.