Please Note: To read about my upcoming drawing course at NCI in June, 2010, please click here. 

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During the four days of teaching Nature Journaling at the North Cascades Institute Learning Center, my primary watercolor demonstrations were designed around painting the peaks and the trees of the region. The scale was kept small for our journaling purposes, so I presented a variety of techniques:

Above, the top left image shows wet-in-wet watercolor washes over a pencil sketch as a base for a journal painting. To the right of this, another pencil sketch is enhanced with watercolor (coarse kosher salt added to Pyramid Peak) with added pencil shading. Stretched across the bottom is a panoramic pencil sketch made at dusk along the road to Diablo Dam. To the sketch I added darker values of paint. In class, I added gel pen hatching and crosshatching to give further texture and shading. Small scratches on Colonial Peak demonstrated removal of dried paint to create snowy crevices.

Above on the left is a "pointilism" variation for adding graduated color and shading. Some students tried this in their journals, and it provided a calming, controllable painting technique. While doing the original pencil sketch, I had added the field notes to assist my memory later. These could be erased after painting. On the right, I experimented by spattering the pencil drawing with suggestive colors. Obviously this is not a technique for the perfectionist, but it is a liberating approach! Loose brushwork added to the foreground trees immediatelycreated the focal points.  

As a calligrapher, I have enjoyed giving some general lettering tips to journaling students. This time, I sat down and demonstrated attributes of the Speedball C series pens, and showed the class how to do non-traditional lettering that would enhance journal pages. Two of the participants were left-handed, so the "ED" you see in the center is my attempt to control the pen with my left hand. I could sympathize with the challenge they face!

Finally, below are sketches I made while we were on our excursion to Washington Pass. On the left I used my favorite UniBall Signo RT Gel pen, which is waterproof when dry, and on the right I tried a new, finer-tipped pen to see how it performed "in the field." It wasn't waterproof! But, for these sketches, a little bleeding didn't detract.