The Don Bachardy Fellowship at the Royal Drawing School invites a gifted and dedicated post-graduate artist from outside the United Kingdom to study at the Royal Drawing School during the Spring Term and to experience the cultural life of London. The School’s Shoreditch campus is located in a converted Victorian warehouse in the heart of East London’s art, design and fashion scene. The fellowship is named after the Californian portrait painter, Don Bachardy (b. 1934), who studied at the Slade in 1961, had his first show at the Redfern Gallery in Mayfair that year, and has gone on to draw and paint over 10,000 portraits from life.
The Don Bachardy Fellowship is sponsored by The Christopher Isherwood Foundation.

The Don Bachardy Fellow will spend 3 full days per week for ten weeks, drawing alongside postgraduate students studying on the Royal Drawing School's MA level programme, The Drawing Year, as well as students on the Public Programme. Courses are taught by a distinguished faculty of over 75 practising artists. The Fellow will be invited to curate their own programme of study choosing from over 38 different drawing courses, drawing out of house in London’s streets and green spaces, life drawing, drawing from art in major museums and galleries, as well as intaglio printmaking courses. The artist will also be provided with a shared studio space alongside Royal Drawing School Drawing Year Students.
The Fellow will also have the opportunity to attend the Wednesday evening lecture series, which includes in-conversations with leading contemporary artists and art history lectures. Recent speakers include Cornelia Parker RA, Phoebe Unwin, Maggi Hambling CBE, Michael Landy RA and former director of The National Gallery, Sir Nicholas Penny FSA.

To assist with travel and accommodation costs, the Don Bachardy Fellow will be awarded a $5,000 stipend, half of which will be granted on receipt of the Fellowship and the remainder on arrival in London. Artists applying for the fellowship should show evidence of observational drawing in their practice. The purpose of the fellowship is to help support an emerging artist and to nurture drawing as their foundation skill.