Collection: Best selling products

Learn the art of clay modelling and create a life-size portrait bust that captures both likeness and character. Discover the techniques and principles of working with clay, exploring its plastic properties to sculpt a 1:1 scale portrait. 

Are you interested in the history of drawing and would like to refine your skills? Learn the classical drawing techniques of silverpoint on prepared paper, red and black chalk on tinted paper and ink drawing with reed pen, quill and brush. With demonstrations and practical methods to inspire your contemporary drawing practice. 

This hands-on, practical workshop will cover the basics of ceramic glaze composition, surface development, application techniques, and firing over a range of temperatures. Learn how to test, apply, and fire glazes to suit your own practice. 

Learn everything there is to know about welded steel sculpture, and the safe use of oxy acetylene, arc and MIG welding techniques. With demonstrations of joining, cutting, shaping, grinding and bending steel to produce successful sculptures.

Learn how to throw pots with a strong architectural form to create objects of simplicity and beauty. Explore the basic structures, movements and techniques of wheelforming in this hands-on course and become proficient on the potter’s wheel.

Ignite your understanding and enjoyment of watercolour drawing and painting by learning traditional methods and contemporary mark-making techniques. Learn to paint the colours of changing light and to capture its beauty with transparent watercolour painting methods, both in the studio and at outdoor locations.

Develop skills, techniques and insights while drawing the three dimensional world of the urban environment. Deborah Marks will guide you through the fundamental drawing concepts that enable a responsive approach to the drawn environment: line, scale, perspective, volume in space, positive/negative spatial relationships, value and composition.

Become inspired by the art of Rene Magritte, whose illusionary paintings connect the poetic expression of ordinary subjects into mythical realms. Complete a series of studies in different mediums and develop at least one sustained painting informed by Magritte’s work, exploring your own imaginative expressions. 

Photo credit: Art Gallery of NSW, www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/magritte/ 

Printing with coloured inks from multiple plates is an exciting way to advance and develop your etching practice. Progress from simple monochromatic prints and learn to confidently add colour to your etchings using more challenging techniques. 

Documenting the eponymic collection, gifted to La Trobe University in 2019, this beautiful 300-page, colour publication, edited by Dr Damian Smith, features texts and essays in both English and Mandarin by John McDonald, Nicholas Jose, Brian Wallace, Nikolaus Ellrodt, Xu Zhongmin, Dr Geoff Raby AO, and a foreword by Manuel Valencia Alonso. Texts for the publication were translated by Jian and Luke Guan and the book was published by La Trobe University Press, in conjunction with Black Inc.

The 2024 Yearbook features the works and artist statements of all graduates from the BFA, MFA, and DFA programs. This 267-page publication includes full-colour images of each artist's work, offering a glimpse into the diverse practices of this year's graduates. Published by the National Art School the catalogue serves as a dynamic record of the 2024 graduating class.

Immerse yourself in the world of photographic portraiture with renowned photographer Anne Zahalka. Explore your own visual language while composing contemporary, staged portraits in both professional studio settings and outdoor environments.

A dynamic 2-day ceramics workshop which explores slab building and a variety of surface embellishment techniques using terracotta clay. Develop experimental hand-built slab forms with vessel-like structures. 

Enhance your expressive capabilities and expand your visual vocabulary with a focus on drawing and mixed media. Learn to use collage as a dynamic tool to explore subject matter, balance compositions, test colour and spatial relationships and venture outside your comfort zone. 

Curious about what it’s really like to be a working artist? Step behind the scenes of the art world and visit real artists’ studios, going beyond the white walls of galleries and museums, to the places where creativity and experimentation come to life. 

Discover the ancient tradition of clay figure-making to hand build intimate, ceramic sculptures in the image of your loved ones, as a totem of remembrance. Learn foundational ceramics skills combined with artistic outcomes. 

Are you eager to move from being an arts enthusiast to a practising, exhibiting and sustainable artist? Learn what it takes to become a professional artist; how to research and understand the investment of time, money, planning, energy and creativity it requires to survive in the arts.

Image courtesy of the Geoff Raby Opening, National Art School

Are you time-poor yet want to learn how to take great photos? In this two-day intensive photography workshop, you’ll let go of relying on the camera’s automatic settings and be taught the fundamentals of manual exposure, empowering your creative shooting capabilities.