We will be exploring South Luangwa National Park, which is an extraordinary and beautiful wildlife area, full of game, and often described as ‘Another Eden’.

Our base for this safari is the friendly Thornicroft Lodge, which was built by Art Safari director Mary-Anne Bartlett and other Africa colleagues in 2008.  The lodge is simple but comfortable and situated just outside the park on the banks of the Luangwa River.  The chalets look out over the river and there is always something happening at the water’s edge – whether it is hippos and crocodiles lazing around, or elephants coming to drink!  Wildlife can also wander freely through the lodge at any time of day, so there is always some action to be sketched and drawn somewhere in camp…

We focus on wildlife sketching from open vehicles and use the time back in camp in the afternoons to work up sketches into paintings in watercolour and other portable media.  Your tutors will give demonstrations and provide one-to-one tuition time.  They will help you to develop your way of working, and observational techniques for drawing moving animals from life.

On our day and night game drives, we hope to fill our sketchbooks with elephant, lion, leopard, giraffe, zebra, impala, kudu, baboons, and warthog on the grassy floodplains and mopane woodlands, not to mention pods of hippo and numerous water birds in the ox-bow lagoons of the Luangwa River!

This is a cooler time of year when the skies are clear and blue, and predators are more active – making an encounter with the Luangwa’s famous leopards even more likely….

By giving yourself a week’s painting in the bush you have a wonderful opportunity to study animals in depth, improving your field sketching techniques and your plein air confidence.

Whatever your level of artistic skill, the combination of art and wildlife is unbelievably exciting, challenging and great fun!

The artist tutor will be one of our artists with African wildlife experience which include Mary-Anne Bartlett, Julia Cassels, Shelly Perkins or Alison Street.