Zoom Workshop 130b: Spring Essentials for your Nature Journal

Spring Essentials for your Nature Journal

Session 2 of the Zoom Drawing Workshop Series · Botanical Sketchbook for All Seasons

Sunday, April 12, 2026: 1pm – 5pm ET

✏️ Instructors: Pam Thompson, Vern Fannin, &/ Sam McWilliams
✅ Level: All levels
🌱 Botanical Subject(s): Spring-friendly plants you can easily forage near home, including:

•Buds on branches, shrubs, trees, and emerging from the ground
•Spring flowers such as tulip, daffodil, crocus, dandelion, and other local blooms
•Fiddleheads and unfurling plant forms
•Young leaves full of soft textures and saturated greens
•Spring fungi and mushrooms
•Revisiting winter plants to see how they’ve changed
•Any local plants you discover this season, perfect for personal nature journaling

Workshop Description

Step into spring with fresh eyes, bright colors, and a sketchbook ready to capture every new leaf and blossom. In this joyful four-hour online workshop, we’ll explore the botanical magic of early growth, perfect for anyone wanting to deepen their connection with nature, expand their botanical illustration skills, or simply enjoy the creative energy of the season.

🌿 A Gentle, Joyful Approach to Nature Journaling

This workshop is stress-free, time-friendly, and adaptable to your creative goals. You can follow one plant through the seasons, track what’s growing in your garden, or let curiosity guide you to new spring discoveries. Whatever brings you joy, your sketchbook becomes a place to observe, reflect, and play.

🌱 Why Spring Is So Inspiring for Your Botanical Sketchbook

Spring is overflowing with forms that practically beg to be sketched—curled fiddleheads, opening buds, cheerful wildflowers, soft new leaves, and fungi pushing through the warming soil. These plants offer lively shapes, vibrant colors, and approachable complexity, making spring one of the most exciting seasons for nature sketching. Start off spring with a spring in your step, and savor the joy of appreciating seasonal changes in real time.

✏️ Skills You’ll Build in This Workshop

• Capturing Early Growth & Spring Shapes: Learn to sketch delicate curves, buds, petals, and unfolding forms with confidence and clarity.
• Watercolor & Colored Pencil Techniques for Vibrant Colors: Explore soft gradients, bright greens, and lively tonal shifts that make spring botanicals pop.
• Inking for Detail & Definition: Practice line work that enhances edges, textures, and the unique character of each plant.
• Seasonal Sketchbook Layout Ideas: Design journal pages that weave together drawings, observations, and notes to create your personal record of the season.
• Lettering & Notes for Nature Journaling: Use simple lettering styles to add interest, dates, plant names, and memorable details.

🍃 Join One Session or the Full Year

This workshop is one part of our four-session Botanical Sketchbook for All Seasons series. Each session is available individually, or you can enroll in all four at a discounted rate to stay motivated and creative throughout the year… Learn more