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.

Costa Rica Nature Journal/Sketching Workshop ~ 2

I started planning this workshop after giving a nature sketching workshop at El Remanso Wildlife Lodge last April. I was excited about it, because I love the location so much and it is such a high to share El Remanso ~ and sketching and journaling as well ~ with other like-minded artists. I always sketch and journal when I go there, and over the years I have developed many techniques I knew were worth sharing.

The workshop had so much going for it (superb location, popular subject, people with the February doldrums), I expected it would be a good one. I advertised it in The Artist's Magazine and got nearly a hundred requests for information, and eventually I had three students enrolled. While I have taught for many years, I haven't had time to develop a strong workshop following yet among international workshop attendees, and several professionals I spoke with felt this was a quite respectable enrollment. It just takes time.

A few days before departure, I started preparing my journal, a 6x9 spiral bound book, with hefty #110 paper good for pencil and ink drawings and light watercolors. It's small enough to carry everywhere but large enough for decent sketches.

Decorating the cover came next. My sister-in-law, Marcia, makes lovely hand-dyed scarves, and the blotter paper underlying the scarves gets decorated in gorgeous, unpredicatable patterns. I glued a beautifully dyed sheet of this onto the front of my journal, then printed out a title on my computer and glued that on. Then, to waterproof it for the humid climate, I taped it with transparent package tape.

Using an exacto blade, I made two slits in the back cover and inserted brass fasteners (see the photos) to which I attached an elastic band. This worked perfectly, and kept the pages from flopping open unexpectedly.

Inside the cover, I arranged things pretty much the same as I had in my Hawaii Journal (see previous posts): with a photocopied ruler taped along the upper edge, business cards, and an acetate pocket taped on two sides to hold ephemera ~ things I might want to add to the journal later, extra business cards (and sometimes just to hold things safely until I needed them during my travels).

On the first journal page, I glued a map of Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula, with an inset of Central America to show where Costa Rica is and where the Osa is in Costa Rica. I also marked where El Remanso is on the Osa. I used this map a number of times to show curious strangers where I was going.

Since I'd visited El Remanso before, I knew that the people there (and perhaps my students as well) would be interested in my ongoing travails with a ten-inch snowstorm (so alien to tropical dwellers), which had me snowbound for nearly a week just before leaving. As if that weren't enough, a previous deep freeze had cracked a water pipe, and due to the deep snow the pump repairmen couldn't come fix it ~ so I was using snow-water for all my needs for several days.

So the next two pages showed my snowbound world, with a view out the front door which included snowdrifts and the toboggan which hauls wood to feed my woodstove (I have an oil furnace, but I'd rather burn wood for environmental reasons, given a choice).

During my enforced snowbound solitude, I wrote a semi-humorous poem to start off my trip, entitled "Preamble to a Journey to Costa Rica." I hope you enjoy it ~ be sure to click on that graphic to enlarge it enough to read. One reason I included it was that as part of the workshop I teach ways to use poetry to enhance a journal, and this makes a good example.

Finally, my driveway melted enough for me to slither out and do some last minute shopping and take a shower down at Dan's house (snow water heated on the stove does NOT a good shower make!), and the next day I was on my way.

Since luggage does disappear, I wore clothes I could wear repeatedly with overnight laundering if necessary (safari pants with zipoff legs are a must), and I boarded the plane carrying my journal, a pen, camera and binoculars, and all of my workshop supplies in my carry-on luggage so that if my belongings got lost my workshop could go on.

Dan drove me to the airport, with promises to look after Jesse-the-CurlyTailed-Cat. And now, having gotten myself fairly launched, I'll continue this saga tomorrow.