New navigation tool, September classes and our future plans (plus a thank you!) (Patreon)

Dear supporters,

As the summer draws to a close I can't thank you all enough for continuing to stick with us - your support has allowed us to support our models and tutors with ongoing work and to prepare for the years ahead. As we move forward into an uncertain autumn and winter the safety of the most vulnerable people in our community remains our priority and we want to honour the involvement of all of the friends we have found in our new online drawing community. As such we're developing a more substantial online programme which we'll be rolling out over the next 9 months, starting with an expanded programme of tutored and untutored online life classes this September. Here are some key aspects of our first stage:

Changes in Tiers
In our recent survey, lots of you said you'd be prepared to pay more for a greater range of classes. We have decided not to increase any costs as we'd rather you could afford to support us for longer, rather than pay more now; if you'd like to pay more, you can always edit your pledge above the recommended amount. We have introduced a new Student All Access Tier to support students and young people at this difficult time - this is a highly discounted version of the Life Drawing tier aimed at full and part time students under 35. If you're eligible, feel free to switch your support immediately. If any of you are in financial need but still want to be involved with Draw, please email me on info@draw-brighton.co.uk at any time and we'll find a way to help you out. 

Draw Patreon Navigator
As a result of feedback, we've created this navigation tool to help you find everything in our image and blog post archive. Make sure you are logged into Patreon, then visit www.drawbrightonnavigator.com and click on the images to find the blogs and images here on the Patreon site. We'll eventually integrate all of this into the main Draw website.

Our ongoing programme
All of our online drawing courses will now be run via this Patreon; here is a run down of what you'll access to get each week. You shouldn't feel pressure to take part in everything. It is best to see this programme as an ongoing resource which you are helping to create by supporting Draw - it will be available for you to use any time in the future. 

• Mondays
  09:00 Weekly blog post released (All Tiers from 14th Sept)
• Wednesdays
  11:30- 12:30 Tutored Life Drawing  (Student Tier & Life Drawing Tiers from 16th Sept)
  13:00- 14:00 Online Life Drawing  (Student Tier & Life Drawing Tier)
  19:00- 20:00 Online Life Drawing (Student Tier, Life Drawing Tier with All Tiers on the last Wednesday of the month)
• Thursdays
  19:00-20:00 Portrait Club (Student Tier & Life Drawing Tier)
• Fridays
  09:00 Weekly photo-set released (Life Poses: 2nd & 4th weeks, Portraits: 1st & 3rd weeks, Clothed: last week of the month)

The Tutored Online Life Drawing Course
Lance's popular tutored life drawing class is moving online! From the 16th September he'll be holding a weekly Zoom webinar, from 11:30-12:30 every Wednesday, focusing on a different aspect of figure drawing each week. All the sessions will be recorded and posted here on the Patreon for you to re-watch any time, so you can follow the course weekly and catch up on a recordings when you miss a session or take it at your own pace, learning from the recordings alone. Our weekly blogs will co-incide with the themes of the course, all off which can be found on our navigation site and we have created a new Facebook group where I'll be giving weekly feedback on Patreon supporter's drawings. 

In-Person Life Classes
For anybody in Brighton keen to get back to real life classes, we feel your pain and longing! We are currently packing up our studio of 11 years and moving to a larger space a few doors down in New England house, where we'll be setting up social distanced classes. This is an expensive process and is being funded solely by your ongoing support right here on Patreon, so we thank you for sticking with us! We'll be start a limited number of in-person life classes in mid-October with full precautions in place. The new space will also be set up for recording, allowing us to provide a higher quality of live, online life classes. 

That's about it for now. Pop me a message if you have any questions about everything above, enjoy the sunshine and take good care of one another. 

Warmest wishes, 

Jake