Hello and welcome to Cardiff Open Art School’s Spring/Summer 2012 programme! We’re delighted to again to holding an exciting range of creative course aimed to appeal at anyone with a passion for art and design. It doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced artist, are preparing a portfolio to apply for an art, design, architecture or creative industries course or if you’ve never picked up a pencil or paintbrush before, we’ve got something to offer you.

We offer access to our studio to those with printmaking experience so please contact us if you would like to come in and work on your own pieces or would like to receive some advice and support from our printmaking team on a one to one basis.

Our next programme of 10 week evening classes starts in April and we’re so pleased that Morgen Hall’s new Surface Decoration for Pottery course has got off to a really good start that she will be running it again from 24 April.   Students will learnt about 9 different decorating techniques from embossing and slip marbling to using stencils, rouletting and Tobacco Mocha patterning.  Her very successful and hugely enjoyable Learn to Use the Potter’s Wheel course will also be running again too.

James Green will again be running the Advanced Painting in Oil and Acrylic programme.  If you want to learn more about your digital SLR why not sign up to Thomas Bartlett’s Digital Photography course on either Monday or Thursday evenings.  We’re again running Life Drawing classes on both Tuesday evenings and Wednesday afternoons for those who’d rather come along during the day.   The Wednesday afternoon courses will be run by Chris Holloway and the Tuesday ones by James Green.  Chris will be running the ever popular Exploring Drawing course again too.

Our new course Developing your Portfolio course to help students prepare a portfolio to apply for art and design foundation courses has now been launched and so we are planning to run it again from April on Thursdays, 4.30-6.30pm.

We’re just finalising plans for our summer School which will take place between Monday 23 July and Friday 3 August so we will be posting details of the painting, drawing, printmaking and ceramics courses that we will be running then.  We’ll also hopefully be adding further weekend masterclasses, and we’re always keen to hear your thoughts on subjects we should be covering.

A range of credit-bearing multimedia courses are also available with our partners Ffotogallery, based at Chapter Arts Centre. These include Introduction to Photography, Digital Video and Creative Web Design. Visit www.ffotogallery.org for further details.

Places are limited on all of the courses, so book now to avoid disappointment! Give us a call on 029 2041 6628 for a course list and an enrolment form.  You can also pay by card using this number.

For regular updates, news about CSAD shows and interesting art and design events happening around town follow us on twitter @CardiffCOAS or join our Facebook page Cardiff Open Art School at Cardiff Metropolitan University.

We’ve also added a page to the site listing our tutors’ favourite art and design books and websites, so if you have any suggestions you’d like us to add of books and website that have inspired you please get in contact.

Diary date: Cardiff School of Art & Design’s Degree Show will launch on Saturday 9 June then it will be open to the public from 11-15 June.  All welcome.