Nature Sketching Details Workshop ~ 11-22&23-08

There's never enough time! I've been struggling with this problem with every workshop ~ I have so much I want to teach/share, and so little time to do it in.

During all this last autumn's workshops I tinkered lavishly to find the right balance of time vs. content, guaranteed success vs. challenge, plus adjusting other details ~ all while giving the students results they expected and hoped for. The student evaluations at the end of the classes really helped me figure this out (and the students who won the evaluation raffles appreciated the autographed book prizes ;^)

This fall, I had split the Nature Sketching classes into Beginning (Nature Sketching Basics) and Intermediate (Nature Sketching Details) workshops, which gave the students time to concentrate and complete more projects. Starting in January, I will have further split off the watercolor pencil painting section into its own two-day class, in order to allow the students more time to hone their skills and experiment with the medium.

I will also split the Nature Journaling workshop into two 1-day workshops so that people interested only in nature writing OR in nature journaling could come to whichever class appeals to them. The workshops will be held back-to-back on a weekend, so it's easy enough to take them together, as before.

Obviously, this December I am going to be busy working out more exercises for some of the classes, because when I split them up there was necessarily some repetition of the exercises to bring each class up to speed. The students would prefer a fresh exercise instead of repeating a previous one. In terms of learning, it's probably more useful to repeat an excercise several times, but when you pay for a workshop you expect to get all-new revelations, so I'll work to make sure there are no repeats. I really DO listen to my students!

So that's the update on the behind-the-scenes workshop planning. Here's what my most recent batch of eager students went through.

DAY 1
This was my intermediate nature drawing workshop, so I was quite pleased to see some returning Basic students appear Saturday morning, along with new students. And I had all ages, from a very mature twelve to somewhere in the late 60s or 70s. Great people.

The format of this class was to spend the first day on pencil rendering, including ways to get the drawing accurate, shading for three-dimensional effect, and learning special techniques for special situations (realistic eyes, hair direction, and rendering symmetry in such things as seashells and leaves, etc.). Here's the class, warming up with the draw-your-hand exercise before launching into the details.

Notice the way the classroom is set up in an L shape ~ I like to coach from in front of the student if possible. This keeps me from jostling the student (and the adjacent student) because I can come in from the top of their drawing instead of beside, although sometimes I need to go around behind to see the subject from the student's perspective.

When I have more students, I add another table to make a U, which still gives me the inner work area. This is especially nice because no one has their back to me, and students can see the demos better.

For this class I now tried out a new project, and the results were thrilling both to the students and to me. Students who had time, took their project home to perfect, but most of these were finished in the class.










Be sure to click on these to look at them close-up, because we did some really tricky stuff with them.

DAY 2
On the second day, after admiring and critiquing the mushrooms they'd brought back to class, we concentrated on color, trying pencil, ballpoint, and micron pen drawings combined with various watercolor pencil color wheel combinations to get brown. Then they drew bones and experimented with various ways to use color as shading on the (relatively) white bones.

I encouraged them to use unconventional colors for effect, since anything white bounces back colors that surround it, and their results were fascinating. Here's a pony tooth rendered in green and blue, and a beaver jawbone rendered in ochre and purple, and they both came out excellent and very natural-looking (as did the bones by other students).

The next project was my standby orchid ~ this is a useful model for teaching brush techniques for edges, because it emphasizes how to get precise clean edges and also how to get soft, blurred edges which blend off to nothing. It always amazes (and pleases) me how every orchid ends up different, even though each student hears and responds to exactly the same instructions.

Now they had MOSTof the skills they needed to tackle the day's final project, to draw and paint some gourds I'd found in the local farmer's market. There was one remaining technique I showed them about removing color from the pencil tip with the brush to apply to their picture. You can get a nice, intense color this way, and apply it more precisely then you could with the pencil.

I have to say here that my students are really gracious about my taking pictures. I urge them to just keep working as I come by to snap photos (I do turn the flash off for the least intrusion). For the two photos showing how to remove color from the pencil, though, Randye slowed down a little so I could get the pictures.

One technique we used for these gourds was an under-wash to help blend the color values. Varying shades of yellow seemed best for most of these gourds. You can see the wash at right. The students had a choice of doing the original drawing with pencil or ink. I was pleased when some of them chose ballpoint, because we had tried it out earlier in the day.

While drawing in ink would seem impossible for a beginning or even intermediate student, they discovered (as I had hoped)(and MOST counter-intuitively) that drawing in ink is sometimes easier and more freeing than drawing in pencil. Some students not only drew the original gourd in ink, but then went back after coloring it and put in details with a pen, with excellent results ~ particularly for a first-time effort. Here are their gourd paintings. Be sure to click on them to see them close up.






























As I was saying in the beginning of this post, there never seems to be enough time to finish. These gourds, first time watercolor pencil renderings for (I think) all of these students, were completed (or not completed!) in about an hour and a half. Amazing, huh? While the students learned an immense amount, I think with less pressure and more time they would have been able to produce even more satisfying paintings, as well as learning a few more subtleties. I think the two-day watercolor pencil workshops from January onward will be a very pleasing improvement over this one-day experience with color.

Nature Sketching Basics~10-4&5-08

That workshop last Saturday
was fun ~ and enlightening.

As is often the case, it was mostly women with a token male. This ratio is fairly typical in the "art workshop world." I don't know whether most men think art is "sissy" stuff, or they're just not open to their creative side, but it's really unfortunate that a huge percentage of guys out there aren't able, for whatever reason, to seize the opportunity to get in touch with their creative impulses. I greatly admire the men who manage to overcome the barrier. I don't think all cultures are this way, but our American culture sure is!

Remember to click on the images to see larger versions.

This was the first run of my new two-day beginning drawing class. On the first day, Saturday, I was moseying along and forgot to watch the clock. My students were only part of the way through their turkey feather drawing (imagine drawing a turkey feather on your very first day in drawing class ~ but oh the results and satisfaction!).

I reluctantly decided to let them take the feathers home to draw. This was really scary for me because I had collected those feathers from under wild turkey roosts on my hillside (here are a pair at left), but the turkeys don't roost there anymore. How would I replace them if they turn up missing?

But the students promised to care for them tenderly ~ and voila! The next morning they all returned with the feathers and the most incredible drawings of them, which they'd done the evening before. Here is Chris's feather ~ Chris is a newby artist ~ always wanted to draw but never got the chance. Nice work, huh?

But with this "timing faux pas" on my part, I realized that I was trying to cram too much into the days. So, that first evening while my students were drawing turkey feathers, I restructured the second day with fewer components, to go at an easier pace so they could get everything done the second day.

My students learn a whole lot of stuff in my workshops. I usher them along in increments, with each new skill building on what they have just learned.

On the second day, which was the Landscape part of of my new Sketching Basics format, they worked on building right-brain templates in the workbook (a duck this time) , drew sticks and Sequoia (Sierra redwood) cones (take a look at those cones!!!!), practiced foliage rendering techniques, learned some basic shading techniques, and practiced shading using a small purchased tortillon a larger one they created themselves.

Then, at the end they did the final assignment, to draw a landscape from a photograph. After graduating from this last assignment, they are ready to proceed to actual landscapes (or whatever they want to draw, actually), just by putting together all of the components they have learned in the class.

I forgot to take pictures the first day, and the second day one of my students, Sandy, couldn't come and another student, Helene, had to leave early. But I was snapping photos off and on all day whenever I saw someone progressing especially well. Lots of pictures (Kiah and Ann are hard at work on their landscapes here)! And although I have pictures from nearly everyone except Sandy, I somehow missed Kiah's landscape ~ sorry Kiah!!!So here are the rest of the photos of their work. [Yo, students: If I misattributed any pictures, please accept my apology.]

I am very pleased with not only their results but the success of the 2-day class format. And according to the evaluations (as usual, filled out carefully by each student for a chance to win a free copy of one of my books) it worked well.



That 2-day workshop was the first two days of my original Nature and Landscape Drawing class. In the past, it was a 3-day workshop, the third day being watercolor pencil. I have divided that 3-day workshop into two 2-day workshops, with the second workshop featuring more advanced pencil drawing techniques, then the watercolor pencil day. I'm eager to teach that second workshop, but so far I haven't had enough people sign up for it.

It's always hard to determine why people don't sign up for a class: it could be a poor title or description (I'm responsible for both) it could be that the topic has already used up the available interested people (Ashland is not a large community), or it could be the dismal state of the economy, with people saving their $$ for necessities.

I'm hoping enough people sign up for this one, though. It's exciting for me to slow down and allow the students more time to try things, even though I don't get to share as many cool ideas and techniques.

That workshop is scheduled for the weekend of October 25-26. Hope you can come!

Nature Sketching Workshop ~ What it's like

Tomorrow is the first of three days of my Nature Sketching Workshop. It's described like this on the Ashland Parks and Recreation website:

Tap into your artistic right brain as you draw shells, pinecones,

feathers, leaves, landscapes and other items.

Discover how to shade your drawings for depth and realism.

Learn how to use watercolor pencils to add color and vibrancy to drawings.

Instructor Irene Brady is the author and illustrator of

many award-winning nature books and is

an experienced right brain drawing workshop presenter.

She has worked as scientific illustrator for the

National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab

and illustrated for Audubon, Ranger Rick and other nature magazines.

She teaches drawing and journaling workshops in the US and Costa Rica.

Irene's encouraging, gentle guidance will

show ways to improve your skills.

At the end of each class, take home your art

and your workbook of step-by-step technique guides.

Beginning and intermediate artists

will find this nature and landscape drawing class invaluable.

All you need to bring is lunch.

AGES 12 & up DAYS Saturday, Sunday & the following Saturday

DATES March 8, 9 & 15 TIME 9am~ 2:30pm

COST $95 (includes all materials)

PLACE The Grove, 1195 E Main St, Ashland

There are 3 open spaces left, and you can still get into the workshop by contacting me, so if that interests you and you live in the Ashland, Medford vicinity, come join us!

I've been getting my materials together for the workshop, and I'm really looking forward to meeting my new students tomorrow morning. I'm hoping I can get down to the store today to buy an electric teakettle to make tea with, because I'll be taking a big assortment of teabags (we can make tea in the classroom microwave, but it seems to taste better if you do it with a teakettle ~ go figure!). A cuppa makes a workshop more warm and comfortable, somehow, especially when you have a whole group of strangers meeting for the first time.

My workshops draw an extremely varied group of artists and artist "wannabes." It's fun working with the already-artists, and I really enjoy and respect the "wannabes" for their courageous foray into the world of sketching and drawing ~ it takes a certain amount of guts to get from the "I can't draw a straight line" to the "...but I want to learn how."

Actually, I don't teach straight line drawing [grin]. That's what rulers are for. I teach how to translate what you see in front of you into a line on the paper that really LOOKS like what you are trying to draw. And then how to put shading and shadows on it that give it shape and 3-dimensionality ~ then how to give it pizzazz with color. And with the techniques I've developed over the years, I can almost always find a way to transmit that information to even the least developed artist (sometimes it takes more than one try to find the right words or techniques to transmit the idea to an individual, but I'll keep trying as long as the student is willing).

Interestingly, my workshops usually draw highly accomplished artists as well as beginners. You'd think the two wouldn't mix, but I've noticed that artists at all levels can benefit from discovering just WHAT they are doing when they apply their pencil/pen/brush to the paper, and WHY it works or doesn't work. And HOW to make it work if it doesn't. And that's what we cover in the first class with some right-brain applications to drawing natural items, and tips and tricks to shading. In the second and third classes, we enlarge the scope and capabilities with landscapes and later with watercolor pencils. Everyone proceeds at their own level of expertise, and the workshops end with satisfied artists, still at all levels, but each ready to take the next step up. I've learned SOMETHING from every workshop or art class I've ever taught, so we all benefit.

So, like I said, I'm rarin' to go, eager to meet my new friends. And I'm almost packed up to go (yeah, yeah, I know my classroom's only 10 miles down the road, but I've got lots of goodies to take for the class, so it does require a bit of packing).

And that's today's blog. I'll report on the first class within a couple of days. If I'm not too pooped to pop tomorrow evening, I'll try to put something up.

Actually, I just called The Daniel, and he says I may borrow his camera for the class (if you recall, mine went missing at the airport on my return from my last Costa Rica Sketching/Journaling Workshop). I like to take pictures of what happens during my workshops.

So if it all works out, if I can figure out the camera, if my students will give me permission to put their pictures on the blog, you shall see some results soon.

My Family Takes My Workshop

I think I could start nearly every blog with "puleeze excuse the long delay between posts!" or "sorry this is so long in coming." So, to avoid such inane beginnings, I'll just, from now on, ignore the eonic lapses between the times I get to the writing.

It's not that nothing is happening to blog about -- too MUCH is going on. F'rinstance, my family just had a big reunion a state away (in Idaho, 500 rangey Oregon sagebrush miles from here, some of it along The Oregon Trail). The trip takes all day to travel, but the fall colors were gorgeous. I always stop in Vale, a tiny Oregon town with wonderful murals painted on most of the buildings, to rest and admire the once-upon-a-time scenes.

The reunion consumed a full week since I stayed with my brother the printer and not only got my family visiting done but also oversaw the printing of some Campsite Critter Guides (a sideline to my book business) and a batch of one-page lead responses which I'll send to the multitude of people who requested more information about the Costa Rica journaling workshop from my ad in The Artists' Magazine. Go take a look!

At any rate, here are my sibs: David, Elsie, Diane, Laura, and myself.

Now, normally, a family reunion is just lots of related people talking and reminiscing and getting reacquainted after a long period of intermittent, fleeting, or nonexistent contact. But this one (in addition to all that good stuff) was pretty scary.

Actually, it's not that I have scary relatives -- it's that my sister Laura talked me into giving my watercolor pencil workshop for all the siblings while we were all together. Now, doing a workshop for strangers has gotten to be a pretty comfortable prospect. But doing the same workshop for the people one holds most dear and who once gave one advice from on high and/or participated heartily in sibling rivalry with one, and for whom one wants to shine (and, I admit it, to impress just the teensiest bit) -- well, that's pretty daunting. But I figured it would be great practice and a quick way to add a bit more polish to my delivery (I don't feel I have a class properly groomed until I've given it ten or twenty times) so I agreed to give the workshop.

In the end, it turned out to be great fun for all of us. We all stayed at my brother David's house, and I gave it twice, because not everyone could make the first class, right there on the kitchen table and using my workbooks which I always bind with watercolorable paper in the back. The table was a little crowded, and we only had three hours for the class each time, but I am pleased to say that either I have a phenomenally talented family (including sis-in-law and a nephew) or I'm hitting the right note with the workshop. Or maybe both.

Here are the results, and since I didn't get around to asking each one if I could put it up on the blog, I won't identify who did what. Aren't they FINE? By the way, the models are an apple from the tree in the back yard, tomatoes and red peppers from Marcia's garden (these are heritage tomatoes, orange and purply-green), one of Marcia's nasturtiums, and a gourd from the grocery store. Actually, that isn't the same apple because the original got put in a salad. But this one was close.

I think they're pretty terrific for three hours work, including the introduction to right-brain drawing, drawing the subjects, then coloring them. Click on them for closer views.

By the way, for the Nature Journaling Workshop, which I talked about in the last post, I still need to make a third workbook. I was going to just use the watercolor pencil workbook from the Nature Sketching Workshop, but I decided there are things I need to condense and add to make it work better for the Nature Journaling Workshop. I now have a journaling workshop scheduled for January in Ashland (Oregon) (the actual date eludes me) which will give me time to tidy up any loose ends before I give it again in Costa Rica.

So. until next post....keep tuned! And if you want to be notified when these infrequent posts happen, click on the little box in the right-hand panel that will notify you when a new post comes up so you can come and read it. It's a handy little gizmo.

Cheers, fellow artists, and adieu!

Report on my Sketching/Journaling Workshop

Thursday night was the third and final session of my new Sketching/Journaling Workshop (I still haven't figured out a good name for it ~ any suggestions?) This is the one I've been chronicling over the last couple of months as I've worked on it.

My workbooks arrived in plenty of time (whew!) and were received by the students with surprised pleasure (you don't usually get a pretty workbook in a workshop ;^)

The workshop went well, and throughout this blog today I am introducing my class and their works, having their permission to post their photos and works here. They were wonderful people, every one. I miss them already. The first two classes were on Saturday and Sunday from 9-2:30.

However, I can't claim it went exactly as expected. Although I've been writing books and teaching art for many years, I'd never taught creative writing, and I set my sights a bit too low. The students jammed through the exercises with great gusto and skill, leaving us finished half an hour early. Falling back on my art experience, I gathered them in a circle and we all sketched each other for the remaining time. It was a great exercise, but not exactly "writing." I sketched this student, and colored it later as a demonstration in the watercolor pencil session.

The class attracted people who wanted to journal and sketch. Some had never journaled, most weren't able to sketch as realistically as they wished. Some had neither drawing nor journaling experience, so the challenge was to keep everyone working at their own pace and level. Suzanne, a very creative artist, had created a gorgeous hand-made journal that she'd never worked up enough nerve to write in -- it was too beautiful! Shirley S. had tried journaling many times, but always gave up in despair over her art. Everyone had different approaches and needs.

SESSION 1: The first day was full to the brim with drawing exercises and projects. I use right-brain techniques to get beginners off the ground and remind intermediate artists about ways to draw more accurately. Beginners were discovering skills they hadn't realized they had. My one intermediate student brushed up on line work and tried out new tools. We did contour and modified contour drawings and other fun things. Evern's cowrie (at right) came out nicely, as did Shirley B.'s abalone shell, below. The assignment for overnight was to journal and sketch a page, and find a related item to glue onto the page to add interest.

SESSION 2: The next morning we critiqued the journaling efforts -- some great entries came back -- Gail sketched a hail-torn leaf, wrote a bit about it, and glued in pieces of her awning which had been holed by the hail. Shirley S. sketched maple leaves and seeds in the park, and glued in maple seeds and a pressed leaf. A student told us about microwave plant presses! I need to get one!

We sailed right into the writing exercises: take a boring sentence and turn it into an interesting paragraph. The biggest problem with journals is that often we don't work to make them interesting -- but if we do, we'll have far more interesting reading in the future. Their efforts were stellar, and each one read their paragraph to the appreciative audience.

Later, we progressed to poetry, haiku, rhyming and free verse, and limericks. Poems really add a personal touch to a page -- both in content and visual effect -- and the students seemed quite pleased with their efforts, inserting poems and haiku into later entries quite skillfully. In general, the writing was MOST excellent, often funny, drawing appreciative laughter, head nods, and applause from the group.

We also experimented with rendering the haiku with felt-tip calligraphy pens, and making calligraphy initial caps. But in retrospect, I think I will try another approach to that. The ink felt-tip tends to soak through onto the reverse side of the page and the tips are too large to render the letters small enough to visually complement the page. The students offered some good ideas to pursue in that area, which I'll probably mention later.

The assignment was for two journal entries and sketches, with glued-in items. While this isn't a scrapbooking class, a journal is a good place to save important flat items, and they do add a tactile and visual boost to a page.

SESSION 3: This was an evening session and lasted from 7-9 (well, 9:40). Class was supposed to let out at nine but went on another forty minutes because people were having such a good time coloring their sketches and enjoying one another.

I introduced the watercolor pencils, and various techniques they could use, then I sat down with them to demonstrate techniques by coloring the sketch I had made in the portrait circle on the first day, showing them tools and rendering techniques as I proceeded and answering questions and helping individuals as needed. Our critique at the end was helpful, with students seeing what others had done and learning those techniques for their own later renderings.

LATER: Since I've taught long versions of the drawing and coloring classes before, those sessions were relatively easy, although without the full length drawing sessions I couldn't take the students as far toward their goals as we wanted. So I did suggest they might want to attend drawing classes I'll do later on in the season.

I was sorry when the class ended. So were the students. They asked for a list of people's email addresses so they can get in touch with each other after the class, and I sent that out yesterday, plus a .pdf of the letter I'll be sending out to people who responded to my ad in The Artist's Magazine (more about that in a later blog). So there it is, the first run of the Sketching/Journaling Workshop has debuted.

At left is a "patch" Suzanne glued over a drawing that she felt "bombed." At right is our workshop announcement and the Journalist's Credo that Gail glued inside her journal's front cover. Above, check out Shirly B.'s pressed flowers. Above are Dan's fuzzy almonds, and scattered throughout this blog entry are a lot of other great pieces from the class!

At the end of the last session, I held a raffle for my book The Redrock Canyon Explorer in return for evaluation sheets which each student filled out. To me, that's a great trade, and I got lots of good feedback from them, which I'll put to work next time I give this class.

By the way, the students knew they were experiencing the first run of the class (and that they'd gotten a $20 discount because of that). I decided to tell them right from the get-go, and they seemed to enjoy helping me spot areas to be improved. In the last session as they colored their sketches, they offered a whole raft of ideas to add to the longer Costa Rica workshop next February.

Thanks to each and every one of you students for your bright presence and participation in this inaugural run of "our" Sketching/Journaling Workshop. You made it a joy for everyone around you, and your contributions will have a definite imprint on all the future presentations of the class. Thank you!