Observing Nature: a Teachers Course 8-12-09

Well, THAT was fun! Last Wednesday I taught the Observing Nature Workshop for teachers for the first time at North Mountain Park Nature Center, in the pavilion. It was a gorgeous day, in the 80s, with a flirty little breeze.

I had taught the sketching/journaling half of this workshop previously to a group of children ages 8 to 13, but this current group was adult teachers and nature center volunteers who wanted to learn how to teach the same class.

Still untried, the second half of the workshop looked great on paper, and would consist of debriefing the teachers on their experience as students (observing, sketching and journaling nature), showing them how and what to prepare to make it work, and then jamming on their ideas and suggestions. I was scheduled for three hours, and ran over about ten minutes at the end, but everyone was so into the process that only one person left before it ended. That's a good sign.

So. Here's what we did. After introducing myself, I explained that they were to take the first part of the session as observing teachers but also "as children," and I would teach it as I would teach the course for kids. To clearly signal my role, I put on my orange baseball cap to signify that now I was Teacher and they were Kids. This was very helpful in keeping things straight, because if I wanted to comment to them as teachers I could whip off my cap to speak, then clap it back on again to get back to the curriculum. I'm not sure why, but that drew laughs every time I did it.

As with the Observing Nature class (click on the link above for more info) we began with a Right-brain introduction. If non-artists are to teach this course, this grounding in the process will help them feel confident enough to teach it to others. The photo shows the contour drawing of the hand (drawn without looking at the paper) on the right, and making a modified contour drawing on the left (okay to look from hand to paper while drawing). The contour drawing always gets some chuckles because a blind drawing looks so silly.

With the confidence gained from the hand drawing (quite a bit of confidence, in fact), they were up to the task of drawing either an oak leaf or a bone. Here are some of the drawings they produced.

Now I put an Observation Tray on each table and encouraged them to rummage around in them, pulling out interesting things and guessing what they might be. They found these intriguing, as I hoped. The "trays" were simply cut-down boxes ~ you can see some examples beneath my improvised flip-chart in the image below.

Creating and filling the Observation Trays had entertained me mightily for the last couple of weeks, as I roamed along Bear Creek, through the woods around my house, and along roadsides gathering goodies to put in them.

I had found some amazing things. Owl pellets, oak galls, bark beetle tunnels on sticks, yellow-jacket nest paper, quail eggshells, raccoon scat (they're in order below)....and much, much more, including lizard and woodrat scat in little tamper-proof boxes (that's a lizard scat with a white blob at one end, the signature of a lizard poo). In fact, there are about thirty items in each box, and four boxes, so that's close to 120 items. I collected four of everything that I could, so the trays are very similar, but each has some unique things in it. Click on the images for a close-up look.



The Observation Trays are an integral part of the course, both to center the students and pique their interest, but also to serve as sketching/journaling models if the weather isn't conducive to trooping outside to draw.

By now they were eager to get started, with ideas about things to look for, so I assigned them to groups of four and sent them out to sketch (the only thing missing was an assistant/guide to herd them around. Kids need these, but I figured adults could keep on track and hang together without a leader).

Here are some of them sketching. It was pretty hot in the sun, but if that's where your subject is, well, waddaya gonna do? One journaler's solution was to drape her overblouse over her head. Others found more comfortable benches to sit or draw on in the shade.

And they went through every trial and tribulation faced by every child who takes the course ~ and every joy and wonder as well. The magnifying glasses, hung on lanyards around their necks (with stern caveats to not remove them until they returned to the classroom ;^) and proved extremely popular. The journalists made some fascinating discoveries as they got close-up and personal with their subjects.

As with the children's class, I think it only fair to show you what they produced. After all, only one of these people had much in the way of art backgrounds. That person had enough confidence to make her journal entry in ink (a sure sign).

So here are the journal pages. There were fourteen workshop participants, so it took me quite some time to get these tweaked, and I confess that I didn't spend as much time getting the shadows out as I would have liked. But they DO look good, don't they? And now they can teach this to the kids, right from the workbook. One reason I know they can do it is because I purposely refrained from giving any art advice to anyone as they were drawing. This keeps everything on a level playing field ~ they didn't learn because I'm an art teacher, they learned because everything they needed was in the workbook they were working from.




















I visited them three times during their time out sketching, mainly being supportive or answering questions (not giving advice except once when I forgot!), then I whistled them all in with my sports whistle, offed my Teacher-to-Kids hat, and we finished off the workshop by going through the Teachers Manual I had produced for the second half of the class, complete with Class Plan, Assistant's Guide and Checklist, Permission Slip, Observation Box instructions, Resource List (did you know you can buy owl pellets for $2-$3?), and other good things.

We wound up the class with an open discussion, as Kari, one of the students but also the organizer of the workshop, took notes on the flipchart.

I did forget to hand out the workshop evaluations until after more than half of the people had gone, but four of them generously stuck around to fill them out anyway, and the results were encouraging.

End analysis: a serviceable workshop with absolutely GREAT people. I had WAY too much fun.

My Sketch-Journaling Workshop for Kids ~ Day 1

Hoo Boy! That was too much FUN!
Let me introduce 20 of the neatest kids you can imagine. Their ages range from ten to thirteen, and they applied themselves with great intensity to their journaling workshop. I was blown away by the drawings they produced, as well as their journal entries, poetry and haiku.

Here they are, the whole bunch except for their teacher Tim, who was taking the picture. At left is Joyce, who teaches art, and I'm in the back row (look for the crone). I'm going to go through this one day at a time, showing you what we did, so this blog doesn't turn into a big blob you wouldn't want to read. As I was telling the kids, if you want people to read your journal, you can't feed it to them in big chunks. If you try to eat a whole carrot at once, you'll choke on it. But if you bite it into small chunks, it's easily chomped. So, the plan is: use lots of short paragraphs, and as many pictures as you can squeeze in to hold your reader's attention.

On the last day I sent home evaluation sheets with both kids and their teachers, offering (a carrot, for sure) a free autographed copy of my book Beaver Year in return for a completed evaluation. I picked up the first six filled out evaluations today, plus Tim's, and I think some of his answers make a good introduction to the makeup of the class and their expectations.

He wrote, in response to several questions:

• "These students have class outdoors once a week where they journal. Participants were selected randomly out of a pool of interested students. I hoped they would develop skills and be inspired to make beautiful, scientific outdoor journal entries.


• In the class I learned how much drawing is merely a gateway into biological investigations. Before the pencil touches the paper, we learned to look at the object, consider a starting point and find droplines [this is one of the visualizing tools I teach]. Such looking keeps [us] from 'left brain' iconization of objects."

• In addition, Irene taught us to consider our descriptive text as part of the art on the page. Neatness is no longer enough. Visual pleasure mixes with succinct information recording. The formation of letters and shape of the text area enhance the beauty of the page."

One thing you can pick up from those comments is the fact that Tim (as well as Joyce, the art teacher) TOOK the class, right alongside the kids. They both sat right at the tables with them, doing the homework, everything. They seemed to enjoy it as much as the youngsters.

So here's how it went -- I got pictures of some of it, but sometimes I was so busy teaching I forgot to take photos.

We started out with some right-brain warmups, faces & vases (see the photo), then each student did contour drawings of his/her hand without lifting the pencil from the paper. The first drawing was done while staring at the hand and not looking at the paper; during the second drawing they were allowed to look back and forth between hand and drawing as they drew. This introduces what using the right brain feels like, and we went on from there.

When I felt the kids were comfortable with that concept, we went on to drawing leaves. Using their new skills, with some coaching from yours truly, those guys pulled some wonderful drawings out of the hat! Here're several, but there were lots more great ones

After lunch, they went on to sketching seashells and bones. To tie the sketching to their journaling process, I had each one trace around a heavy paper shape onto the sketch page, to create a design element into which they would journal about their subject: e.g. what it looked like, its color, texture, comments about its shape, their drawing experience, etc.

By this time, we'd pretty much used up the day (and just about used up me, too -- it's not easy keeping on top of what's happening in a workshop!). And with twenty participants, it's not easy to get around to each one for personal instruction, but I did my best. Of course, the ones to get the most attention were ones who asked for it, but I made a point of going to kids who were too shy to ask for help, too.

The main difference between this class of young people and my usual adult classes is the attention span and the need to wiggle frequently (and the giggle and play reflex). If I tried to focus too long on one thing, the noise level would begin to rise and I'd have to work to reestablish some sort of order so we could continue. Still, I was amazed at the focus and determination of these kids to learn what I had to teach. I never felt, at any time, that they wished they were elsewhere (except, maybe, out running off some of that excess energy!). Great kids!

It was a very satisfying day. One down, two to go. But I was still a little apprehensive ~ the second workshop day is totally unlike the first, with an emphasis on writing. I decided to make sure there was some art involved, in case writing wasn't someone's strong point. Still, this IS a journaling class, and their writing is just as important as their art. I was determined to make it interesting and fruitful for them.

Day II tomorrow.

The Second Day of the Nature Sketching Workshop

The second day of the workshop is always fun ~ the air is charged with expectation, but now people know each other so there is good interchange between arriving students (usually missing on the first day). In my experience, students learn a great deal from each other, so I encourage students to notice and try useful things that other students are doing (or not doing!).

Day 2 is our Landscape Sketching Techniques class, so a workbook by that name is at each place when the students arrive, along with pencil, kneaded eraser, and click-eraser (no tortillon). I begin with some helpful hints for finding proportion, and advice on using light/dark and atmospheric phenomena to indicate distance and perspective. In a one-day landscape techniques class there really isn't enough time to get very detailed about perspective, so I only touch on the most prominent aspects they're likely to encounter.

The students warmed up with first a contour drawing of a lizard, then a modified contour drawing, then finally a freehand rendering (Aha! Now they have a lizard template to go with the pigeon template from yesterday!). I was seeing some excellent lizards ready to flit off the pages to disappear under nearby drawing kits or sweaters.

The next step was to learn how to transfer a viewed landscape onto the page, so I introduced some ways to do this, then we examined a landscape drawing I had made for this exercise, utilizing a goodly number of textures suitable for wooded mountains from far distant to fairly close. We discussed how to make water look like water with horizontal lines, and how NOT to make amateurish-looking conifers. They worked diligently to replicate the demonstration drawing on a blank part of the page and to duplicate as many of the textures as time allowed.

The next step was to examine what makes a landscape interesting: rock and foliage textures, gnarly sticks, grass clumps, rock formations and clusters, and other such goodies. As a hands-on exercise, the students tried some grass and leaf textures, then selected and drew a gnarly stick, working on "seeing" the stick shape, using good line weight for various parts of the stick, adding texture and 3-dimensionality to the shape, and discussing things that might be left out or added to improve a picture. As always, I was roaming around the tables stopping to encourage, praise, and suggest different approaches if someone appeared to need assistance.

After a useful critique of the stick drawings, the students were asked to do something that surprised them, and I'm not going to tell you what that was because I teach this workshop regularly and if I blab, it won't surprise future students. The element of surprise is important to that exercise.

Throughout this workshop I stress working quickly and not concentrating on a small area of the drawing until the entire outline is on the paper. This "hurry up" directive is disconcerting to some students at first ~ they're trying for accuracy, but here is the instructor urging them to work quickly!

But a quick first sketch is extremely important in nature drawing. After all, you're not illustrating a vase of flowers on your kitchen table, and whatever you are sketching is likely to move away or disappear entirely; you may not have a comfortable or safe place to work for more than a few minutes; if you are sketching with a group, they may choose to go on to the next spot; it may begin to rain or the light may change or fade, or mosquitoes may come out for a feast . . . all kinds of things make it essential to learn how to get a first sketch down quickly.

As I tell my students, after creating the initial outline, always begin working on the most important part ~ a drawing of a chimpmunk's head without the body (it ran away before you finished) is a "portrait." A drawing of the body without the head is, well, "a corpse." So, on we forged, practicing some typical foliage for trees, shrubs and grasses.

Lunch was fun ~ most of us stayed in the classroom to eat and we got into an interesting discussion about art in the schools and a lot of other off-the-wall stuff. After lunch, we began our final landscape project: to draw a landscape scene from a photograph, laying out the forms with confidence, inventing or adapting textures to show foliage, rocks, earth, water, sky, etc., and applying enough contrast to make the final rendering interesting. I provided a large selection of landscape photos from which each student chose one that suited his or her tastes.

We broke for a critique with about fifteen minutes of class left, then worked on the suggestions that came up in the critique for the rest of the class period. I also demonstrated and had students make a large tortillon out of tissue and tape to use in applying large areas of sky and water.

The homework assignment is to finish the landscape and bring it to class next Saturday for the final day of the workshop. I like running this workshop on two successive weekends for this reason ~ there are several days available for the students to really get into their drawings if they wish, and sometimes the results are spectacular. We'll see what comes of this group!

I had demonstrated some techniques for drawing symmetrical objects previously, so I also sent a sequoia cone home with each of them, so that they could try out the technique if they had time. Sometimes students return without having done the homework. That is always too bad, because you get more out of the classes if you apply the techniques just learned to the homework project. But if you can't find the time, I don't scold ~ circumstances sometimes make full application impossible. I just hope for the best.

I've been sorting out my workshop materials from the Costa Rica Journaling Workshop to reassemble for the final day of this sketching workshop. I also need to punch and comb-bind the workbooks. But I'll be ready by Saturday ~ if I don't play too much hooky in this gorgeous weather. It's a lovely sunny day out, about 50 degrees and no breeze. Yesterday was even warmer. Ahhhh, spring! I can hardly wait!