My Sketch-Journaling Workshop for Kids ~ Day 2

The first task on Day II was to look over the homework. Kids came streaming in while I was setting up, eager to share their homework, get advice on their sketching, and ask what was going to happen this second day. As usual, I told them to wait and see!

[NOTE TO ALL YOU SKETCH~JOURNALISTS: To make your pictures look good I had to lighten some parts and darken others, but I tried to not mess with your art. I tried really hard to make each picture look the way it did in real life. I hope I succeeded, but if I didn't, I apologize!]

One delightful aspect of this school is that the children are trustworthy, and I didn't have to take down my workshop at the end of the first day and lug it home (I didn't even worry about leaving my camera untended in the classroom during the day). That saved me at least half an hour this second morning, which I could spend with the kids, chatting with and looking over their homework, which had been to design, sketch, and/or write out a journal page on their own.

(My faithful readers are probably shaking their heads about how I'm going to lose THIS camera, too ~ hey, Tim does it all the time with his camera.)

I asked the kids to leave anything they'd like me to photograph open on the front of their table when they went out to morning recess, and I'd try to get around and photograph it. That way, no one need share their work if they didn't feel like it. So the artwork you see here is of pieces offered by the students for sharing on this blog.

After discussing ephemera (mementos ~ things you want to tape or glue into your journal) and providing an "ephemera pocket" for the students to tape into their journals, we talked awhile about the journaling process and what makes a good journal entry. Our first assignment was to turn a boring sentence into an interesting paragraph, and I was pleasantly pleased at what the kids wrote (one favorite word seems to be "crepuscular").

I handed out the freeform shapes, and had the students design a Sample Journal Page, tracing in the shape the paragraph would take on the page, then creating a contour drawing of their subject (for which I provided photos). The students had a choice of several subjects, but most chose the frog.

I've put up Tim, the teacher's, page (the first Sample Journal Page, above) along with the others. One of the nice things about teachers taking a workshop with their kids is that they experience all the trials and problems the students do, and can determine where they'd deviate from the workshop plan ~ which will make it easier for them to teach a similar class to future students. So here are a few of the Sample Journal Pages. I asked Tim to show his page (just as the other students were doing), to give them an idea of what he felt might constitute a good journal page for their future journaling at their forest site, EarthTeach.

Some of the kids were so enthusiastic that they actually sketched and journaled during their lunch break, coming back with enhanced journal pages, and ephemera ~ a leaf, flower petals ~ that they had collected to fasten to the page.

After lunch, we moved on to haiku (basically, a 17-syllable nature tone poem ~ with a few other rules thrown in for good measure). This proved a challenge for some of the students, as did rhyming 4-line poetry, but everyone improved over the course of the next hour or so, and when I asked for volunteers to read their journal pages, haiku and poems, there were plenty of proud offerings. A couple of kids had written particularly nice pieces but were too shy to read them aloud, so I asked their permission to read them for them. All the kids were very appreciative of each others' work, even applauding a couple of particularly evocative pieces.

Here's a tip, by the way, and I do this with adults, too ~ I like to have people read their haiku or short poems twice. There is often a lot of good stuff ~ a subtle rhyme, an unexpected connection, a surprising idea ~ in a poem and there isn't time to appreciate it the first time you hear it. A second reading allows the listener to really take it in, and discover nuances or ideas they may have missed the first time around.

The poetry and haiku were transferred to fresh pages, and the kids practiced my new Fun Font (I had created at least four, and as many as ten examples of each letter ~ or they could create their own version ~ see on some of the Sample Journal Pages) to fit together into words, sentences, titles and captions. Then they tried an illuminated capital ~ a fun way to dress up a journal page which satisfies the doodler in all of us.

And, oh yes! I showed them how to shade spheres and make eyes that look three dimensional and alive.

BTW, in case you're wondering about all these interminable, upbeat, positive comments and observations about the kids fromTim's class at John Muir School ~ these truly are not exaggerations. Oh sure, sometimes I had to ask them to quiet down, sometimes there was a short session of wrestling or running before class or during breaks, and of course there was some giggling and kid-to-kid restlessness and playfulness that had to be quelled (or sent out to the playground) on occasion.

But a comment like "Okay, now, I want to see 44 eyes [that included the teachers] looking up here at me right now!" (I learned that one from Tim) or "Hey, guys, we're on kind of a tight schedule and if you talk while I'm talking I'll have to keep saying it again and then you won't have time to try this technique..." or "Okay, I'm going to give you a ten minute break while I get ready for the next project, but I want you back in here and sitting quiet at 10:50." Then they'd quiet right down (or shrug into jackets and head for the door). I sometimes heard Tim's gentle reminders when I was occupied with one-on-one coaching. Tim had prepared them well, and they were determined to become good journalers. And they always returned punctually when given a break.

So Day II went well. Now, I had to make it through Day III with spillable water, breakable (and expensive) paintbrushes, waterbrushes and watercolor pencils, and a possibly frustrating new technique for twenty live-wire kids who so far had been VERY well-mannered and focused.

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.

Costa Rica Nature Journal/Sketching Workshop ~ 6

We were all getting dangerously accustomed to being pampered. Meals at El Remanso are always gorgeous and delicious; we were waited on hand and foot by friendly, competent staff; our rooms were tidied as soon as we left them in the mornings; lovely drinks were brought to us by the pool in the late afternoons as we watched the sunset or swam; beautiful, fascinating, and intriguing things to sketch and journal about were all around. What more could we possibly wish?

This morning at 6:30, Marilyn and I went out to see Jocelyn and Kathy off as they zipped out on the zipline to Gerardo in the huge old canopy tree for breakfast. There, for more than an hour, they absorbed the wonder of their eyrie, sketched, and ate their breakfast seventy feet above the ground amid singing birds and passing monkeys, coming back later with slightly glazed eyes and faraway expressions. Here are a few photos of their experience:

And here are a couple more.

Since this morning's class was expressive writing -- paragraphs, haiku, poetry, they had a perfect subject for their musings. We focussed on making an attractive page with evocative writing (as opposed to terse mutterings), then moved into haiku, which pleased everyone. Here's a haiku from each, seventeen syllables, nature subjects, two ideas, one short and one long, and both related:

Kathy's

Jocelyn's






Marilyn's

They were all very pleased with those, as well they should be. While they were quietly meditating, scribbling lines, erasing, and chewing off hangnails, I got a chance to do a few of my own ~ actually, I'd gotten up with the howlers early in the morning and had dashed off a whole string of them around sunrise. But I did some more in class.

I think those haikus are quite adequate (see on the journal page), but I know that a Japanese poet might spend days on a single haiku, so I realize that mine/ours could probably use some polish. Still, they dress up a page amazingly, much the same way a little sketch does. For instance, my little haiku:

Scarlet macaws,
swiftly passing, long tails trailing.
Two-by-two you fly.

lends itself to my little drawing of flying macaws. Two of them had passed overhead as I was haikuing earlier that morning, and I wanted to commemorate it.

After we had experimented awhile with the haiku, we tried some short poetry. This was fun, as well, with the whole class getting a bit bawdy as we put some of our experiences into 4-liners. After introducing the concept and helping the students with meter and cadence, I worked on a little poem to fill the empty spaces on my journal's Magnificent Frigatebird skull page (another good use for a poem ~ to fill an empty space).

After lunch, we got to the calligraphy part of the workshop. Jocelyn, who has produced calligraphy greeting cards, hangings, logos, and other professional projects, had offered ahead of time to lend her expertise to this section of the class, and I was delighted to have her input. My calligraphy is somewhat plodding ~ I know the basic principles, and I can make recognizable calligraphy letters, but my main thrust in calligraphy has been to use individual letters as initial caps on pages.

Watching Jocelyn produce her beautiful script was humbling ~ I realized that I should leave the teaching of this ancient craft to professionals in the future. Marilyn is quite capable in calligraphy, as well (see her haiku, above) , and even she far outshone my feeble efforts (you'll see an example of mine in tomorrow's blog ~ try not to be cruel).

THEREFORE. I have decided that in future classes, I will be teaching my new Organic Vacation Font, which I freely admit is a take-off on the hand-lettered font created by Danny Gregory, my hero and fellow journalist who wrote The Creative License, Giving Yourself Permission to Be The Artist You Truly Are. The great thing about this font is that 1) you can make it look any way you want it to, 2) you can't get it wrong, and 3) every time you make a letter it can look different (look at each "a" in the example ~ and that's just a sample.) I hope Danny doesn't mind, but I had just discovered its unique character and was using it in my journal for this trip. I highly recommend his book, by the way. It is chock full of ideas and concepts to help you become a versatile and accomplished journaler. He has written and illustrated numerous others, as well

The Organic Vacation Font is the perfect font to dress up a journal, and it really lends itself to a carefree, fun vacation narrative. I'll teach that, but I'll also have some nice calligraphy examples for those who like a slightly more formal look. That's still in the development stages. As I mentioned yesterday, I learn from my students, and I think I learned quite a bit during this class day.

We finished for the afternoon and went our separate ways to hike or swim or to sketch and journal. I spent some time quietly meditating, sketching and writing on the yoga platform, then watching Gaia turn the lights down. A tropical sunset is a very calming experience.