Join us for as long as you’d like to sketch a live model in the galleries of the exhibition Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black (September 12, 2025–January 18, 2026). Taking inspiration from the themed sections of the exhibition, Brooke Stewart, lecturer at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, will lead beginner-level artists through experimenting with foundational drawing techniques, such as shading, darkening, texturing, erasing, freehand drawing, and more.

Feel free to bring your own sketchbook and pencils; only a limited supply of 18 × 18 clipboards, graphite pencils, and individual sheets of 11 × 17 paper will be provided.

Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black celebrates the act of drawing using familiar tools—charcoal, chalk, crayon, and graphite. Each material has distinctive properties: charcoal can be intensely rich and velvety, or delicately gray and suggestive, while graphite is slippery, shiny, and easy to erase. Crayon is deeply black and waxy, whereas chalk can be crumbly and diffuse. The creative manipulations of these media—smudging, scraping, and erasing—make them versatile tools for adding intensity, depth, precision, and expression to an artist’s vision. The exhibition includes drawings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, John Singer Sargent, and Odilon Redon, alongside works by 20th- and 21st-century artists, such as Piet Mondrian, Lyonel Feininger, Diego Rivera, Richard Serra, John Wilson, Isabella Quintanilla, and Toyin Ojih Odutola, all of whom push their use of drawing media in new directions.

Free admission, but registration is required. You can register by clicking on the event on this form, beginning on Thursday, October 9, at 10am.