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Tap into your imagination on 4 December and join artist Emma Barnard for experimental drawing workshops as part of the Heads up! Shining a light on innovations in oral health exhibition programme.

With Emma's guidance, participants will learn to use the blind contour technique, a process of continuous line drawing without looking at the paper. The technique combines direct observation of an object and using intuition, exploring various ways of seeing both visually and imaginatively.

Learning to draw using touch is the essence of the blind contour technique. The session will teach participants a new visual language to draw experimentally, one that focuses on the process of drawing rather than a finished work of art.

Everyone is welcome and no previous drawing experience is needed to take part.

The workshops are 50 minutes and participants are welcome to stay for as long as they like. The first takes place from 12.30 – 13.20 and the second from 13.40 – 14.30. Sign up for a place on Eventbrite.

Image credit: Emma Barnard, 'A Dry and Silent World: hidden disabilities', 2018
Image credit: Emma Barnard, 'A Dry and Silent World: hidden disabilities', 2018

About the artist

Emma Barnard MA (RCA) is a visual artist specialising in lens based media and inter-disciplinary practice and research within Fine Art and Medicine. She has worked extensively with ENT (head and neck) consultant surgeons and their patients’ to explore the patient experience and the doctor/patient dynamic through art. The resultant work has been exhibited widely in the UK and internationally most recently in a solo exhibition titled Primum Non Nocere in Berlin. She presents her work at conferences within the medical and medical humanities fields such as Cambridge University and Kings College London.

At Kings, Emma has worked alongside medical educators on projects and workshops that introduce creative thinking into the medical curriculum. A recent collaboration with Professor Abigail Tucker and her research lab in the Department of Craniofacial Development & Stem Cell Biology, A Dry and Silent World: living with hidden disabilities, is featured in the exhibition.

Twitter: @PatientAsPaper

Heads up! Shining a light on innovations in oral health 

2 – 13 December 2019 | Monday – Friday, 12.00 – 18.00

Free admission

Heads up! Shining a light on innovations in oral health is a collaboration between King’s College London’s Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences and the university’s Culture team.

Image: Human ear drum and canal at 17 gestational weeks – Mona Mozaffari, Centre for Craniofacial, Stem Cell & Regenerative Biology, King’s College London

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Event details


Bush House Arcade
Arcade at Bush House, South Wing, Strand WC2B 4PJ