Nature Sketch-Journaling, May 9-10, 2009

A new venue! The Jefferson Nature Center on Bear Creek just south of Medford, Oregon, is a lovely place for a workshop. On the weekend of May 9th, it was warm and sunny, the air was scented with lilacs and other spring flowers, and we had a wonderful time. As one of the students said on the second day: "This is a great Play-Day!" And it was.

DAY 1
First, I showed them how I outfit myself to go out and sketch ~ that's a picture of me unloading my sling bag. It carries my Robert Bateman sketchbook (6x9), a sitting pad, my specs, a fistful of watercolor pencils and a sharpener, mechanical pencil, kneaded eraser, ballpoint pen, my waterbrush and a wipe rag, magnifying glass, snack, and a bunch of other things as well. It's always fun to unload it for a class, as things keep coming and keep coming, like from a magician's hat. I really should put a couple of colored scarfs in there for a finale!

We started out with the right-brain warm-ups, as usual, the students producing some great "blind" contour drawings of their hands as a beginning. Contour drawings always look best with all the wrinkles, hangnails and gnarly stuff included. The results are always fun. There's no way to be critical of a drawing you did without even looking!

After that, drawing the curled oak leaf was easy, and every drawing was excellent. The women in this group are definitely candidates for my intermediate drawing class.

With no further ado, they graduated to drawing seashells, planning their drawings as journal pages, leaving space for text, title, interesting dividers and other items to be added later. They practiced some "fun font" lettering to use for titles, and soon their journal pages began to emerge.

On the first day of my journaling classes we concentrate on drawing, and on the second day we put our minds to creative writing, poetry and haiku. But I like to see what they can do on their own that first day. I was quite impressed with the output from this bunch. [Remember, you can click on any of these images to see a larger version.] Here's Tiffany's initial journaling page. Notice the bull kelp seaweed she used to set off the text from the drawing.

Usually the students stick to the assignments, but sometimes I get one who wants to go off on her own tack. Maya drew an excellent shell, then took off on a tangent to journal an imaginative lighthouse. She worked faster than the others but used her time inventively to decorate the opening pages of her journal with a Celtic knot and other imagery. I think the other students found it inspiring to watch her fearless efforts.

Since I had added a couple of ideas to this class plan, I decided to offer the students the opportunity to add some watercolor pencil color to their journal pages on this first day instead of waiting till the second day. It was an inspired idea! Simone is at work here, adding color to her shell (see above). All the journals sparkled with color in short order. Here's the first day's colored entries:







The two that have "torn" edges were actually cut with "torn edge" scissors, which give a much better control of where the edge ends up. Since Simone and Tiffany were working on single sheets instead of in journals, they cut their pages out to mount in their journals later.

DAY 2
On the second day, my students produced some VERY evocative creative writing, haikus and poetry. In order to not bother my students as they work on meaningful word combinations, I write in my journal, too. While they were making 4-liner poems, I did this one (which, fortunately, wasn't taken too seriously):
"My workshop students stare, intent,
Focused on their page.
If they don't write a poem right now,
I shall get enraged."

Having fun with the watercolor pencils, they did creative things with their poety and colorful borders. Then I brought out the Microfleur press (a microwave plant press), and we all went outside to select wildflowers (and tame flowers, too), grasses and leaves to press and add to our pages as ephemera. Journals can really brighten up with pressed foliage and flowers, especially when the leaves are colorful in the fall.
Here Maya loads up all kinds of small florets to decorate her page, and taking turns, everyone got a chance to try out this innovative "instant plant press" (we were mostly using 2 or 3 thirty-second nukes for each group of flowers/leaves).

We broke for lunch after an intense morning of play, enjoying the warm sunshine (perfect temperature!) at the picnic table in the Nature Center yard... then back to work arranging dried flowers, titles, haiku, poetry, writing, and colorful dividers on the pages. Students read their haiku and poems out loud, as well.

Occasionally I would shoo everyone out of their seats to go around and look at what the others were doing. In my journaling classes I encourage people to share and copy ideas from each other. If someone does something cool, it's okay for the others to try something similar out on their own page/s.



The day ended too soon for all of us, although workshops are generally so energy intensive that I'm exhausted at the end of the day. Maya's Dad took this picture of us out the side door of the Nature Center under the wisteria (did you know wisteria smells like jasmine tea?) at the end of the workshop.

Great day, great place to work, great people, great fun.

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!

On Talking to Yourself

Yesterday was the second session in my current 3-session Nature Sketching Workshop, and I must confess I am having fun with it. I think my favorite part is bringing home the importance of cognizant observation -- and the amazement (of my students) that mere looking is not the same as cognizant observation.

Here's what happens in the class: As part of the landscape sketching instruction, I include (and stress) sketching foreground items such as sticks, pinecones, shrubs, grasses, etc.

I show the students a sequoia cone, and go through the thinking-out-loud process of observing the cone: what is the shape (egg-shaped, with a flat end), how are the scales arranged (diagonal rows, at cross angles in a grid), what does the perimeter look like (very jagged, outlining the scales), and what does the end of each scale look like (a bumpy diamond, with a "kissy-lips" shape). They help select and create the verbal descriptions, and say them out loud.

Then, as an exercise, I ask the students to choose either a sequoia cone or a gnarly stick from my gnarly stick collection and draw it for about fifteen minutes. We don't describe the sticks out loud, as each one is different. As they draw, I go from student to student helping them get the shape right, applying shading, showing gnarliness and wood grain, etc. The results are generally good, and the students end up being reasonably pleased with the results (NOTE: artists are way too hard on themselves).

But then I remove the sticks or cones and I ask them to redraw their subject on a fresh page from memory, without reference to the stick or cone or the previous drawing.

Amazingly, the students sketching sticks they had just examined and drawn for fifteen minutes, often cannot remember the shape of the stick, where twigs protruded, which way the stick curved, or other major landmarks on the stick.

Students drawing a cone, however, can produce a creditable drawing, right down to the design on the ends of the scales. They have developed an internal "template" of a sequoia cone which they can use for later reference.

You'd think that the stick image would be deeply imprinted in one's brain after fifteen minutes of intense study, but I think there is something else going on here, and it has to do with our highly developed left brain, which uses words and symbols to operate.

Since we described the cone in highly descriptive words and related features to known shapes and symbols, then drawing the cone from memory is easily accomplished by applying those symbols and shapes to the paper.

The gnarly stick however, hasn't been "labeled," so it is difficult to remember its amorphous shape accurately. This also makes drawing the stick a challenging task since each line has to be drawn on its own merit instead of as part of, for instance, a "kissy-lips" shape.

The solution to the drawing problem of a loosely structured form like a gnarly stick is to keep up an internal (or if you're alone, an external) dialogue while drawing. For instance, to tell yourself that "this stick is an inch wide and six inches long" or "it is five times as long as it is wide," or "it's shaped like an open-mouthed whale." And to describe protruding twigs: "there are two twigs on top, three on the bottom, and the middle top one forks." Additionally, "twigs emerge at a 45 degree angle" and "the long crack extends from the first twig to the fourth, and has a triangular break in it." "Two knotholes, one is oval, the other is round and both look like volcanoes." Sometimes a negative shape (the shape around the subject) can be described instead: "the negative shape at the end of the stick resembles a dog's head." Descriptions like that.

If you have words to hang a scene on, it is easier to remember for later reference, and it is also far easier to draw it the first time than if you are simply trying to push your pencil in the direction a line seems to go in the scene.

Next time you draw, talk to yourself. You may find the conversation quite stimulating and educational ;o}

p.s. The Journal/Sketching workshop is proceeding quickly -- I'm on the journaling part now! And I'm into the Common Moorhen (used to be the Common Gallinule) page in the swamp book illustrations -- did you know that moorhen chicks have blue foreheads and lipstick red bills? And bright candy-pink skin showing through sparse black hairs on the top of the head? They're a hoot!

Journaling Workshop Lesson Plan

I blogged yesterday that I would try to get this up today -- the lesson plan for my upcoming workshop-in-progress. {I've been trying to work as I listen to the marvelous Beverly Sills retrospective. She was a remarkable woman with a fantastic voice!} And, at least on the west coast, it is still July 5.

I'd appreciate any comments, advice, criticism or words of wisdom you have to offer. It would actually be nice to hear from you in the comment box at the bottom of this entry, so others can see what has been commented on and add grist to the mill.

I love help on things like this. I always pass around evaluation sheets at the end of my workshops, then work very hard to improve to meet the needs of my students.

Even better, though, is to work out the kinks BEFORE giving the class. So lend a hand if you can. Pro or con.

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Nature and Garden Journaling, with Sketches and Words

First Session is drawing, Second Session is writing, Third Session is for showing results of workshop training and improving writing/sketching skills.

All journal entries will be made with intent to share with the class – no private observations!

This workshop can also be presented in four sessions, with the addition of a watercolor pencil techniques session for learning how to color the artwork.

DAY ONE: Creative Drawing Session

VISUALS: my journals or samples from them
Right-brain workshop stuff
Examples of things to glue into journals

Introduce self, discuss my journal keeping, hand out workbooks

Show some of the journals I’ve kept

Go around room and elicit what people want to do with their journals. Record this on a flip chart for all to see and get inspiration from.

Refer to workbook, list of types of journals

Discuss styles and types of journals

Have pile of books on journaling on display, discuss & recommend good ones

Right-brain Exercises: contour, modified contour, leaf, negative spaces

Drawing Exercise: students make sketch of a natural article around which to journal on the second day – leave area around sketch empty for use in the second session.

Students decide on journal type they will use for this class

• Garden
• Nature
• General

Discuss designing a journal: gutter margins, planning ahead, illustrations first, adding flat things: movie tickets, leaves, pressed flowers, etc.

Assignment 1: research the natural article sketched during class and/or make notes (not on page around sketch) to utilize in applying the creative writing information gained in the next session

Assignment 2: make a 1 (or more) page entry as a baseline example in order to gauge later improvement. Add illustration if desired.

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DAY TWO: Creative Writing Session

Examples of good and mundane writing in workbook
Discuss examples of using a thesaurus to replace mundane words

Creative writing exercise: take a single sentence (from workbook) and expand it to an interesting paragraph, 100-150 wds

Creative poetry exercise: 4-liner rhyming, 4-liner freeform, haiku

Discuss examples of nature journaling entries, garden journaling entries and general journaling entries

Exercise: journal around the illustration done in previous workshop session.

Assignment for final session: Create at one or two entries with illustrations, one snippet of poetry, at least one paste/tape-in article, using information on designing a page and leaving a gutter.

(Select one of the categories below)

• GARDEN ENTRY SUGGESTION: make an observation about a plant in the garden, a sketch of the plant, a haiku, a pressed leaf, flower, seed, seed packet, or cut-out photo from magazine, etc. with notes and arrows.

• NATURE ENTRY SUGGESTION: make an observation about a found natural object, a sketch of it, a haiku of it, a pressed leaf or flower or another natural object found nearby, with notes and arrows

• GENERAL ENTRY SUGGESTION: make an observation about anything you’d like, a sketch to illustrate it, a poem about it, a related flat article (or just something interesting) glued or taped onto the page – if it’s unrelated, label and annotate it.

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SESSION THREE: Results

Students bring their journals with assignments done

Each participant presents his/her journal to class

Class critique and admiration of journals, with suggestions and praise

Share ideas for future journal entries and approaches

Respond to student requests for further sketching or writing exercises.

If there is time, students sketch and journal the meeting during class

For Drawing Hawks and Eagles

Just a quick note: In a recent post I wrote on a raptor sketching workshop I gave, I mentioned the two booklets I prepared for the course. One was Raptor Anatomy for the Artistic Bird Watcher, the other was Sketching Raptors.

I've now put these together into a short book I have named How to Draw Raptors, a Sketching Workbook, and rather than take the time to describe it, I'll just copy the info from its web page for you here:

Written and illustrated for artists of all capabilities, this manual covers the anatomy of raptors from eyes, ears and beak to feet, talons, wings, tails, and feather construction, showing how and why they are unique and the part they play in making raptors the incredibly beautiful and functional predators they are.

Learn sketching techniques and how to get the best results when drawing a moving, living animal; how to indicate feathers with simple strokes; how to use feather markings to indicate the entire feather; the effective use of pencil strokes when shading, and many other details.

Created originally as a workshop manual for birders wanting to sketch live birds at a wildlife rehabilitation center, this 20 page manual is packed with essential information. Its comb binding allows it to lie flat for easy reference and the workbook format allows the user to draw right in the book if desired.

A section on right-brain techniques,with exercises on contour drawing and negative spaces, is included to warm up the intermediate or advanced artist and get the less experienced artist quickly up to speed.

For realistic results, a section on ways to achieve 3-dimensional effects is included. It covers shadows and how they can add shape to a flat drawing, shading with pencil and tortillon or soft stump, erasers and interesting techniques for their effective use.

Templates for drawing raptor heads and raptor talons will give you guidance on how to draw convincing eyes, beaks that would open properly, and translate important information from the shape and size of the skull to a feathered, living bird with fierce, lifelike eyes and glossy beak.

Advanced drawing methods are also addressed, featuring tips and techniques on other subjects as well as birds: hair direction for mammals, symmetry on such things as seashells (this applies to other symmetrical subjects as well, such as bird wings and tails), applying veins to leaves, and shading a furry animal.

If you enjoy drawing animals, birds in general, and raptors in particular, this would be a useful book to own.

The reason I'm putting this on my blog is that I've gotten emails from post readers asking if it's available. It is.

And now I'm back to working on The Green Anole illustration for The Southern Swamp Explorer. The book is supposed to be done by the end of the year and I'm wa-a-a-y behind schedule!

p.s. I'm hoping to get my first newsletter out this coming week. If you'd like to receive it, be sure to sign up for it in the column at right. It will list upcoming workshops and will have a section on sketching tips.