LIFE drawing classes are being started at Manstone Youth Centre by Sidmouth artist Katherine Swann.

LIFE drawing classes are being started at Manstone Youth Centre by Sidmouth artist Katherine Swann.

The professional artist from Alexandria Road, hopes her five-week course that starts on Thursday, November 5, will attract as much interest as ones she has done in Ottery St Mary and Seaton.

Among those who have been at Katherine's class is another Sidmouth artist, Beth Pearson, who is holding her first solo exhibition of her mostly nude life paintings at Kennaway House from Monday, October 26 to Sunday, October 31.

Katherine has to fit in her teaching around her busy life as a mother of three, and will hold the Sidmouth classes once a week from 10.30am until 1pm.

"A lot of my models are local people who live here," said Katherine, whose children are aged from seven to 12.

"I treat everyone as individuals with creative ideas, the classes are not formalised."

She can take up to 15 students and hopes some will go on to exhibit their work.

Having gone to art college in Dublin, where a lot of her work was based on the human form, Katherine will go through different techniques and artists' styles with students.

"We will do a lot of one-and-a-half minute gesture drawings to warm up and they will be learning how to work with oil and pastels," she said.

Katherine also plans to run six Mini Picassos art and craft workshops for children aged from six to eight at Sidmouth Youth Centre in November, on Mondays from 4.15pm to 5.15pm.

Topics will include woven bird pictures, fish paintings and Christmas crafts.

Next Tuesday, October 27, she will hold a half-term activity session for six to eight year olds at her studio in Libra Court, from 9.45am to 10.45am, to make hanging fish collages.

For more details call Katherine on (01395) 579547.