Erin

Advantages to drawing from photos is that you can study the image as long as you need to. I think I made a decent start for a non-artist but found the overall form of the bird challenging to get on paper, while the detailing was a bit easier. I wouldn’t have noticed the brown striping in the bird’s belly unless I had an image to work with and I had been asked to draw it.

I decided to take this course because I journal and sketch but infrequently. I took a field journaling course in graduate school three years ago but haven't picked up my journal since. I want to develop my skills but I'm hoping that the course will help me to jump back in and finally make journaling a habit. I'm an environmental educator and camp director and try to get my students/campers out journaling to enhance their observation skills. I want to walk the walk, so to speak. I hope to do a class with middle school students soon and also thought this course would give me some good ideas for how to structure a journaling class and some activities to help get them going. I really think I will end up using the approach of the first woman in the first video. Her style is already similar to mine and I like how her image seem to pop out of the page through the use of boxes. I'm weakest on the sketching so trying to do that first and write later will be a challenge for me.