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Tutor Spotlight: Holly Summerson

Tuesday,14 October 2025 in Courses, School News, Spotlight, Staff

Holly Summerson joined Leith School of Art as a studio assistant in 2024, and has since tutored at the school on the Introduction to Illustration and Drawing & Painting the Figure evening courses. She has been working in arts education as a workshop leader, tutor, and community artist for over six years, working with students of all ages and experience levels, to explore creative skills through accessible, supportive teaching.

We caught up with Holly to find out more about her practice and talk about her upcoming Workshops.

Holly is an animator and community artist, specialising in mixed-media, hand-drawn and experimental techniques. Bringing together materials including charcoal, paint on glass, collage, and 2D puppetry, she creates textural, swirling images, often exploring themes of transformation, collaboration, and queer and disabled life.

Her freelance work includes film, advertising, informational videos, projections for events and theatre, music videos, and interactive artworks. She received BFI and Screen Scotland funding for her short film ‘Living With It’ (2023) - an animated dark comedy about accepting disability, which has screened at festivals internationally. She studied a BA in Animation at Edinburgh College of Art, and has benefitted from the Glasgow Film Talent and ENGAGE Mentorship schemes.

What drew you to study animation?

If you’re interested in visual art, filmmaking, writing, and making things, animation lets you do it all! Animation is a really varied art from, with very few limits on what you can create and what stories you can tell.

And what about teaching animation?

Animation can often be seen as something complicated or technical, but in my experience it can also be a really expressive, playful art-form with limitless possibilities, and I love to see people respond to that in their own ways. Seeing different perspectives and experiences, told through the creators unique voice and style, is very exciting and inspiring. It’s so much fun to work together on creating a new idea and making it move.

Can you tell us a bit more about your upcoming animation workshops?

In all three workshops, we’ll be using phones and free stop-motion software to explore lo-fi animation techniques, which you could continue to work with in the future. We will look at some of the oldest forms of 2D animation, such as charcoal drawing and 2D puppetry, to introduce fundamental animation skills.

There will be an emphasis on experimentation, testing out materials, and playing with techniques. Animation is a notoriously slow process, so although we’ll each work on a short animated sequence, the focus will be on gaining skills that you could take away with you to future projects. The three workshops - 2D stop-motion puppetry, adding and subtracting materials, and animating your artwork - are stand-alone, looking at different materials and processes. However, they are all based in 2D stop-motion, so would build on each other nicely.

What level of experience are your courses for?

You don’t need any experience in animation to take these courses - each workshop will introduce the free software, and teach animation techniques and processes at a beginner level. For Animate Your Artwork, you will need to bring your own artwork or artistic practice, to develop into a moving image piece. Introduction to 2D Stop-motion would be especially well suited to someone already interested in paper-cut, puppetry, or acrylic painting; Addition and Subtraction would be especially suited to those interested in charcoal and oil paint - however, all materials and processes will be taught in these workshops, with no prior knowledge needed!

Tutor Spotlight: Holly Summerson

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