Level: Beginners
Tutor: James Jessop
Dates: 6 – 10 July 2026
Time: 10:00 – 17:00
Cost: £614
- Earlybird: 10% discount if booked by 28 February
- 10% discount available for City & Guilds of London Art School undergraduate, postgraduate, and foundation students, alumni, and staff. Contact summerschool@cityandguildsartschool.ac.uk to receive the discount code.
COURSE OVERVIEW:
This five-day course introduces you to the creative world of graffiti, street art and urban landscape painting, led by City & Guilds tutor and established urban artist James Jessop. Through practical workshops, drawing exercises and a guided local street-art tour, you will learn how to design and scale up your own lettering, logos and imagery. Exploring both calligraphic and freehand techniques, you will move from sketchbook ideas to a large-scale final artwork. By the end of the week, you will have produced a dynamic urban mural piece inspired by London’s streetscape, using specialist street-art materials and professional methods.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This intensive five-day course offers a deep dive into the vibrant visual language of graffiti, street art and the contemporary urban landscape. Taught by renowned urban painter James Jessop, who has over three decades of experience creating and exhibiting large-scale muralsinternationally, the course provides an exceptional opportunity to learn from a leading practitioner in the field. Blending freehand drawing, calligraphic techniques and large-format design processes, the course is suitable for beginners as well as those who already have an interest in lettering, logos and street-art culture.
Your week begins with an introduction to the history of graffiti and street art, exploring its evolution from a rebellious, grassroots movement to a global cultural force. You will experiment with traditional New York-style tagging and sketch your own lettering and logo concepts, developing confidence in expressive mark-making without relying on projectors or tracing. Jessop will guideyou through specialist materials—from homemade markers to spray paints—demonstrating how different tools produce distinctive visual effects.
A walking tourof the local areawill deepen your understanding of the urban environment as a source of visual inspiration. Through rapid location sketches, notes and photographic research, you will gather material to combine with your lettering and logo designs. Back in the studio, you will refine your chosen concepts and learn how to scale up a composition accurately using proportional gridding, working towards a professional-level final artwork.
The course culminates in the creation of a large-scale piece (approximately 150 × 200 cm) on Fabriano paper, integrating your chosen London cityscape—either realist or imagined—with your own graffiti or street-art motifs. The week concludes with a supportive group critique, offering insight into your artistic development and approaches for future exploration.
10% discount available for City & Guilds of London Art School undergraduate, postgraduate and foundation students and alumni, and staff. Contact summerschool@cityandguildsartschool.ac.uk to receive the discount code.
Please note: in accordance with Eventbrite’s Terms of Service, Eventbrite’s fees are non-refundable. Any refunds made for Summer School bookings will have Eventbrite’s fees deducted, unless we cancel the course. For more information, please see our terms and conditions.