Helen Birch

Helen Birch is a British artist and journalist whose teaching experience emphasizes close observation and practical experiment. Freehand gathers more than two hundred drawings by contemporary artists and organizes them around line, tone, composition, texture, and the inventive use of reference material. Hardie Grant and Chronicle Books published editions in 2013, presenting Birch’s commentary beside examples made with familiar and unconventional tools. Her own drawing practice and her drawdrawdraw blog inform the book’s workshop-like structure. Instead of prescribing one house style, Birch shows how varied choices of mark, surface, scale, and source can help an artist solve a visual problem.