Studio Montefanna · Fiesole

Drawing
Florence

20 to 24 April 2026

Perceptual literacy. Individual expression. Five days of observational drawing, material exploration, and visual investigation across the city of Florence and the Tuscan hills.

View Programme View Presentation
Location
Florence city centre (mornings) & Studio Montefanna, Fiesole (afternoons)
Structure
Morning observational walks · Afternoon studio workshops · 4 wooden panels
Participants
Limited to four · All levels welcome · All materials provided
About the Course

Drawing as investigative method

The Florence Drawing Workshop 2026 welcomes participants from all backgrounds, with no prior drawing experience required. Enrolment is limited to four participants, enabling shared use of the Montefanna studio during afternoon sessions.

The pedagogical approach emphasises developing a personal relationship with drawing as both practice and investigative method, a means of discovering and articulating visual experience. Participants receive tailored guidance to develop drawing methodologies suited to their individual perceptual and expressive capacities.

The course is structured in two parts. Mornings are spent in the city on structured walks organised thematically and chronologically. Afternoons are at Montefanna in the Tuscan hills, where we explore drawing and painting techniques as tools to investigate the nature of landscape and city, and the chromatic relationships that constitute spatial experience.

We work small-format, developing a portable folio that documents both observational studies and studio-based investigations. The course culminates in a synthetic collage that recombines the week's accumulated sketches, creating a personal visual narrative about representation, memory, and visual experience.

"Drawing is not neutral recording but interpretive investigation: all representational systems encode assumptions about how vision operates."

David Dernie

The course aims at perceptual literacy rather than technical mastery, understanding how different representational strategies shape our assumptions about place, sight and experience.
Five-Day Programme

Daily itinerary

01
Introduction
The Primacy of Expression
Monday 20 April · Fiesole
The course's fundamental premise: that drawing is not neutral recording but interpretive investigation. Initial observation of colour as relational phenomenon rather than isolated property.
13:45
Meet outside Roman Amphitheatre, Fiesole. Walk to Archaeological Area for introduction.
14:45
Drawings in Etruscan Museum. Visit Etruscan and Roman temple remains.
16:00
Walk to Duomo di San Romolo and Convento di San Francesco.
17:30
Discussion: what can lines represent: edges, movement, boundaries, rhythm, duration?
Studies / Materials: Graphite, charcoal, ink
  • Continuous contour drawing: draw without lifting pencil; the line becomes a temporal record of looking
  • Structural analysis: reduce forms to geometric armatures
  • Blind contour drawing: dissociate eye from hand, intensify observational attention
  • Weighted line variation: use thickness to suggest spatial recession
02
Medieval City
Oblique Space & Material Colour
Tuesday 21 April · Florence · Studio Montefanna PM
Exploring non-perspectival drawing strategies through medieval Florence, followed by tempera painting and gilding experiments at the studio.
08:15
Porta della Mandorla: climb the Duomo and/or Campanile.
09:30
Baptistery visit. Discussion of external panels and Baptistery portals. Coffee at Cafè Gilli.
10:30
Walk & Sketch: Via Pelliceria, Palazzo Davanzati, Palazzo Vecchio, Orsanmichele, La Badia Fiorentina, Torre della Castagna.
12:00
Bargello Museum (timed entry). Lunch in Florence.
14:30
Studio Montefanna, Panel 1: Egg tempera on gesso-primed boards. Gilding with Armenian bole and gold leaf.
Discussion / Why oblique projection over linear perspective?
  • Oblique projection maintains measurability and clarity
  • Linear perspective privileges a single viewpoint and optical experience
  • Red bole as underpainting: the space and depth of colour
03
Measured Space
Renaissance Florence
Wednesday 22 April · Florence · Studio Montefanna PM
The key to Brunelleschi is geometry and light. Proportions and perspective require precision. Embrace the failures; permit the drawing to speak of process.
09:00
Palazzo Medici Riccardi, then walk to Palazzo and Loggia Rucellai (exteriors).
10:30
Basilica di Santo Spirito: systematic proportional relationships: architecture of mathematical geometry and light.
12:00
Piazza della SS. Annunziata: Ospedale degli Innocenti: perspectival urban form, humanist faith in rational, measurable space.
12:30
San Marco: Fra Angelico. Draw by intensely looking at a 'window painting' without lifting the pen.
14:30
Studio Montefanna, Panel 2: Perspectival 'windows' experiments with Dürer's hinge, pencil, ink and watercolour.
Discussion / Perspective as ideological construct
  • How does perspective differ from embodied experience of moving through space?
  • The Renaissance humanist project: human form as measure of all things
  • What is 'relational drawing'?
04
Chiaroscuro
Tonal Structure & Colour Depth
Thursday 23 April · Uffizi · Studio Montefanna PM
Extended study of light/dark structure in the Uffizi, from Leonardo to Rembrandt. Chiaroscuro as constructed interpretation, not neutral recording.
08:15
Uffizi Gallery (timed entry). Rooms 1 to 4, then selectively: Leonardo, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Rembrandt.
11:30
Basilica di Santa Trinità (interior).
14:30
Studio Montefanna, Panel 3: Chiaroscuro oil glazing studies. Natural pigments, canvas on board, liquin medium.
Extended Study / Leonardo's Adoration of the Magi
  • First squint: find the value of light and dark, ignore lines entirely
  • Use light and dark structure to discover the drama of the geometry
  • Draw it in a different room from memory, with painting out of sight
  • Chiaroscuro space is as much about negative spaces as the bodies themselves
05
Sacred City
Synthesis and Collage
Friday 24 April · Florence · Studio Montefanna PM
Gesture drawing through the sacred city. The course culminates in Panel 4, a collage that that summarises the week's visual experience through fragmentation, selection, and imaginative recombination.
09:00
Copy Shop, Sant'Ambrogio: photocopy week's sketches and print photographs for collage material.
09:45
Basilica di Santa Croce (timed entry).
11:45
Brancacci Chapel: Masaccio/Masolino: early linear perspective, consistent light source, geometric certainty.
13:30
Santa Maria Novella (timed entry). Longer sketches, retracing themes.
14:30
Studio Montefanna, Panel 4: Collage: pigment, glue, photocopies, coloured paper, translucent tissue.
16:30
Group review: brief presentations, course review discussion.
18:30
Aperitif at Montefanna
Collage / Not illustration but methodology for visual thinking
  • Unlike observational drawing, collage acknowledges that memory operates through fragmentation and selection
  • Establish formal structure: grid, radial, layered depth, scattered field, chromatic zones
  • Colour as unifying element, spatial modifier, symbolic content, and temporal marker
Studio Workshop

Four Panels

01
Tempera · Medieval Space
Using transferred drawing from Giotto's Landscape Fragment, tempera glazes are used to find the non-perspectival space of a medieval walled city. Gilding experiment with Armenian bole and gold leaf.
Egg tempera · Gesso-primed boards · Pigments · Transfer paper · Gold leaf · Gum Arabic
02
Perspective Windows
Four experimental perspective windows overlook the Montefanna landscape. Using Renaissance perspectival windows and Dürer's hinge, participants draw what appears geometrically from a fixed head position.
Pencil · Ink · Watercolour · Perspective frames
03
Chiaroscuro · Oil Glazing
Working on a transferred detail of Leonardo's Adoration of the Magi, forms are found first with contour lines, then resolved with a limited palette colour wash and oil glazing technique.
Natural pigments · Canvas on board · Liquin medium · Oils · Brushes
04
Synthesis · Collage
The culminating panel synthesises the week's visual experience. Photocopied sketches, pigment, coloured paper, and translucent tissue are assembled into a personal visual narrative about representation and memory.
Pigment · Gum · Photocopies · Coloured paper · Translucent tissue · Glues
Course Themes

Five investigations

Drawing as Temporal Practice
The continuous line becomes a temporal record of looking. Each mark is a trace of duration; drawing unfolds in time, not outside it.
Colour as Relational Phenomenon
Colour is not an isolated property of objects but emerges through relationships. Chromatic experience is constitutive of spatial understanding, not decorative addition to form.
Memory and Reconstruction
Drawing from memory, collage, and synthetic sketching acknowledge that perception is reconstructive. We do not record; we interpret and recombine.
Multiple Representational Systems
Oblique projection, linear perspective, chiaroscuro, and collage coexist. Each encodes different assumptions about vision, space, and the relationship between observer and world.
Representation as Interpretation
There is no neutral representational system: only partial translations. Visual literacy involves understanding what each system reveals and what it necessarily obscures.

Drawing is not a skill to master but a mode of thinking, a way of attending, investigating, and articulating visual experience. The week's work is a beginning, not a conclusion: a foundation for continued investigation, understanding that seeing itself is learned practice, and that representation shapes understanding.

David Dernie