Book Fair AND Sketch/Journaling Class, 11/7-9/09

Wahoo! I'm RICH!
Well, mebbe not rich, exactly. But I went to the Book Fair hoping only to sell enough to pay for the table ($50 for a 6' table), then sold enough books, outdated workshop workbooks, and prints from my book illustrations to make an extra $174, so I am ecstatic! As my friend Dan Jones says, that'll buy a cord of wood (more like just half a cord, Dan)!

I've done quite a few book fairs like this, and other trade shows, but the tweaking is always interesting. I started out as in the first photo, above, but I noticed that people were reluctant to paw through the prints, so I put a little sign on the front that read "Feel Free to Browse!" and had a little smiley face. Right away, people started looking through them and I sold two immediately.

Then I realized that no one had even asked to buy a book and I realized that I should have piles of books behind each display copy (I KNEW this, but I'd forgotten, since it's been nearly five years since my last book fair). So things got shifted and tweaked until it looked like the picture here. The big display behind the table is the info about our big Art Show and Studio Sale. (Click on any of these to get an enlarged view.)

Now that THAT's over, I need to get back to work to finish preparing for the Art Show and Studio Sale.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
But before I do that, I need to get up news about my last Sketch/Journaling Workshop. It was a good one, (although small, as is usual these days)(and made smaller yet when one student didn't show -- at least I still got paid for her!). Here we all are, and I must say, I really do love small classes. I can give more attention to each student, and everyone feels especially well cared-for.

The first order of business was to get everyone sketching, so we did leaves and shells and generally had a good time. For the Sketch/Journaling class, we don't concentrate so much on the drawing, but as you can see from the journal pages (further down), I do teach enough so that they can make a pleasing quick sketch, and if they work at it later on at their own pace, they will improve dramatically.

This was a nicely varied class of all ages, the youngest being a college student. I particularly love it when I get a good spread of ages. They come in with different viewpoints and backgrounds, and since there's a lot of sharing the experience tends to be richer than average for all of them. This was no exception.

On the second day, we engaged with the watercolor pencils and graphic elements, as well as writing creatively, and turning out some excellent haiku and poetry.

The creative writing really calls out to be shared, and as usual, I had people read their work to the rest of the group. They all have warning before we begin to not write something so personal they'd be embarrassed to share it out loud.

It's fun to watch this process -- sometimes people are shy at first, but as others read their work it becomes easier the second time around. This was a cozy group, evidencing NO shyness from the get-go.

I don't think these students are going to have a speck of trouble journaling on after the end of the class. They were getting a real kick out of the sharing as you can see here!

Of the second day, they produced the assignment of a journal page with a creative paragraph, a colored drawing, a poem or haiku, captions, graphic dividers, and had attached some ephemera (a memento of some kind glued onto the page).

While they were working, I produced a page, too, trying out a bunch of different techniques, lettering fonts, uses of color to divide the page, etc.

When I do a page like this with the students, I'm not trying to knock 'em out. We only have a short time, so I just do a fun page without too much attention to perfection. Because generally speaking, people don't "design" their journal pages so much as just try to get something written/sketched/etc. frequently.

So my demo page had some glued on leaves, a haiku, an experimental doodle with color, a painted leaf, a correction or two, etc. With each technique, I showed them a quick demo, and if they liked the idea they tried the technique on their own page. May page is not a marvel of good design, but it's kinda purty...

With only three people, I could sit across the table from all three and be able to give demos that were easily visible to everyone at once. Love that. And here are their final results. Nice, huh?







Okay. Next time I'll be talking about getting ready for the Art Show and Studio Sale. Till then!

Southern Oregon Book & Author Fair - I'm Ready!

A.a.a.a.a.a.ah..h..h.h.h.hh!
There. A long, satisfied breathy sigh. I did it.

I've completed the first giant step, and I'm ready for tomorrow morning's 2009 Southern Oregon Book & Author Fair (Nov. 21, 2009) at the Ashland Springs Hotel, Ashland, Oregon from 10am to 4:30pm. Free public admission.

I've never done this particular Book Fair venue before, so I had to prepare from scratch. But I really wanted to do it because I can use it to announce the big Art Show and Studio Sale I'm doing with my friend, Cathy Egelston and her daughter Belle Mahoney, in December. And I can transfer a lot of the Book Fair prep to the Art Sale (more about that in a future blog!)

For the last two months I've been jamming on this duo ~ the Book Fair and the Show/Sale ~ punctuated by one Sketch-Journaling Workshop on November 7 (which I will also blog soon, maybe Sunday.)

It's a gargantuan task, preparing more than 300 original book illustrations and making reproductions of others to sell at the Show. Cathy did a smaller Studio Sale last summer, so she has some experience to guide us, and we've both been preparing steadily for a long time now.

The best thing about a Studio Sale is that it's informal. The art is not generally framed, although each piece is in a clear protective sleeve with a cardboard backing so it won't get bent. This saves a lot of time and money. Additionally, all that art that's been lying in cupboards gets a protective cover At Last ;^}

The Book Fair is first, though, tomorrow morning, and I wish I'd gotten time to blog it sooner. I'm going to send a link to this blog to all my students in hopes that it isn't too late for them to trot on down and say hi. But more importantly, I'm hoping to get people interested in the Studio Sale. It's not every day you get an opportunity to buy original book illustrations.

So I'm prepared for tomorrow. In case you are an author and ever have to do an author gig or even a craft fair, I will share my checklist to help you prepare. Of course, mine is all about me, but it should be a useful touchstone if you are headed in that direction. Here 'tis:

Book Show List

Easel (this is to hold the sign for upcoming Art Show and Studio Sale)
Dolly to haul books and supplies (it looks more professional than carrying boxes)
Cushion for chair (if you're gonna sit all day, be comfy!)
Camera in camera case
Backup boxes of books (these will stay in the car until needed)
Box of books to sell (5-6 of each to start off with)
Display books (one of each I'm selling, labeled "for display only") : Illustrating Nature, Beaver Year, Wild Babies, Redrock Explorer, Swamp Explorer
Book stands (I prop each display book in a metal bookend with the front edge curled up)
A brochure to lay open on table (in case someone wonders who the heck I am)
Workbooks in a display box (I'm selling outdated workshop workbooks)
Prints in a display box (I've made prints of illustrations from the books I'm selling)

Supply Box containing:

• tablecloth (a new green one I just made with a woodsy fern pattern on it)
  
• cashbox with 10s, 5s, and 1s (about $70 worth)
  
• calculator (it's easy to goof in all the bustle ~ I don't even try to add)
  
• personal kit box (aspirin, comb, mirror, breath mints, tape, scissors, Tums, etc.)
• business card holder and extra business cards
• sketchbook and pen (if business is slow, I'll sketch and journal)
• eyeglasses
  
• prints and book list (I'll check off every one I sell to make inventory easy later)
• paper pad, 2 pens (people will want autographs -- always ask how the name is spelled, then practice it FIRST - if you muff it, the book is ruined)

Art Show Invitations (I'll put these next to the easel -- they're colorful with the location, date and time of our big show, and offer $1 off any of my prints they buy at the Art Show).

Signs in plastic holders

• a price list (I'm giving a 25% discount off the retail price)
• a warning about workbooks (workbooks with identical covers may have different stuff inside!)

Anyway, the Book Fair is tomorrow and I'm ready. If you're in the area, I hope you'll drop by. There are 60 Oregon authors, and there should be some great gift book ideas, most with hefty discounts.

Teaching Teachers - Jefferson Nature Center 8-22-09

Hello! I'm still alive ~ I think!
I'd hoped to get this blog entry up a lot sooner ~ it's been a much more than a month since I gave my last workshop, but my time since then has been fully occupied with turning both my Observing Nature Guide (for kids) into a downloadable file, and creating a downloadable Teacher's Manual to go with it. Then I created a webpage within my website to offer them on. It takes so much TIME.

(click on images for a larger view)

The Teacher's Manual (which needed the most work) went through at least ten editing proofs and "reproofs" and a reading or two by my brother, David (who is a treasure), to get it to a usable state. I included examples of what they might expect student journal pages to look like throughout the manual. Course objectives are outlined in the picture at left.

I spent nearly a month adding things to the student workbook, as well. Here are images of two of the pages I added ~ one of mammals they might see, another of interesting things to look for and journal. The latter was fun to write. I put in things like doodlebugs and spittlebugs, galls and bark beetle tunnels, etc. An image of that page is below left.

Then I had to make it available to educators. I am my own webmaster ~ I have written every speck of code from scratch for all 104 pages of my website. (The very thought of having done that gives me heartburn.)

The hardest part of such a page is to get things to download properly when writing the code. I don't do webpages every day, so I forget stuff and sometimes it takes ages to sort through what's wrong. And, of course, I have no one to heap recriminations on if it fails to work properly (THAT'S a drag!).

I sent it to all my sibs when I thought I had it working. As webmaster, I can't test buying the downloads because PayPal won't take my credit card from my site ~ they just set it up that way, for some reason.

Ack! The buttons didn't work properly. My sib-fake-customers paid for their downloads, but the email with the link to the files never arrived in their email boxes. I went back into the code and rewrote it, trying to figure out what could be wrong. Finally, on September 28 I sent an SOS to PayPal to get some troubleshooting help, and we STILL haven't sorted it entirely out.

You can download your book right when you pay for it, no problem, but at the moment, yours truly (I) get the email with the link for downloading it later. I'll send you the link as soon as I spot it in my email box, which I check frequently throughout the day, but if I don't see it right away you may experience a slight delay. But YOU WILL GET YOUR LINK!

I may offer a CD of the workbook and manual as an alternative, in case some people aren't on broadband. I anticipate some of my customers will be home schoolers, who may not even be on the grid. To these folks, downloading anything bigger than a peanut makes them feel faint (and/or frustrates them mightily). Two of my sisters are in that situation ~ one is entirely off the grid ~ so I know whereof I speak.

At any rate.....

The workshop at Jefferson Nature Center, on August 22, was interesting. I had seven students, some of them public elementary and high school teachers this time (the last workshop, while larger, had a teacher or two, but ). These are the very people I have written the Guide and Teacher's Manual for. I had made improvements since the workshop at North Mountain Park, and it's a good thing because this group was much more demanding. The teachers at North Mountain Park Nature Center were mostly planning to work under the auspices of the Nature Center and were mostly volunteers and nature center staff. That nature center has its own Guide which I made specifically for their locale. These participants weren't planning to start from scratch to do it themselves ~ they'd do it in concert with the nature center.

Today's group wanted to know how to take the course and use it for a variety of purposes, and I didn't yet have it available online. Their questions and suggestions really helped me sort out how I wanted to handle availability (which is what precipitated all the webpage stuff at the beginning of this blog).

We met in the JNC meeting room, for the first part of the workshop, where I ran them through the exercises in the student guide just as though they were youngsters (in this workshop I tell them that's what I'm doing so they expect to be guided through as though they were between the ages of eight and fifteen or sixteen.

This gives them the opportunity to watch my teaching methods, compare them with their own methods, and decide what would work best for them with this curriculum, their locale, their students, and their own teaching style.

I went into the mechanics of this workshop rather thoroughly in my last blog, so I don't think I'll repeat that here. The second half of the class was the sketching done outdoors along Bear Creek. The students scattered along the banks and had an absorbing sketching and journaling session. One thing we discovered was that older students ~ highschool age, perhaps ~ could probably go out to sketch and journal for 45 minutes without any problem, whereas 20 minutes is plenty for younger kids.

As they sketched, I went from one to the next, admiring their artwork, identifying natural items they were journaling about (poplar and alder leaves and twigs, galls, etc), refraining from making suggestions to improve their art. The whole idea was to show them that they could teach this without an artistic background, since I was teaching it to them without giving them any art advice at all.

It was a gorgeous day, warm in the sun and cool in the shade, with birdsong, ravens and jays croaking, baby lizards barely 2" long skittering across the sand along the creek (see the picture), etc. The liquid chuckle of the creek masked traffic sounds (the nature center is between a highway and the freeway), and the half hour they spent journaling was a peaceful and rejuvenating time for us all.

It does help to have at least a minimal familiarity with the local flora and fauna when you're teaching a class like this, but it isn't essential since you can look things up later. That's what good notes are for, and making the drawings as accurate as possible.

I am fascinated by the differences and similarities between adult journal pages and kid journal pages. The journaling part, of course, is more complete and introspective on adult pages, because this is what we go to school for, to learn to write and think about things. But often the art is almost exactly the same quality, child or adult. This isn't a put-down of anyone's art capabilities. What it says to me is that people, in general, completely abandon their artistic education at approximately 8-12 years of age. What a shame!

Still, with even the minimal Right-brain instruction they received in the first half of the class, my seven quasi-kid teachers were doing great, and more to the point, drawing with confidence. I have no doubt that with continuing practice they could develop their skills considerably.

Here are their journal pages ~ be sure to click on them to see them closer-up: Enjoy!

So there it is. If you'd like to download your copy of the Observing Nature Teacher's Manual and the Observing Nature Guide, along with the rights to copy it as many times as you need to provide workbooks for your students (but not to resell or share with other educators ~ that would infringe on my copyright), you can find it here. I may not have the CD available when this gets posted, so let me know if you want one.

If you have questions that aren't answered in the workbook or manual, please get in touch. I need to know if anything isn't perfectly clear.

Thanks for reading this far. I know I get wordy sometimes, but hey, that's because I'm an author, and that's my JOB.

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.