Sierra Field Journal: Botanical Illuminations


General Description:

Join in this course to deeply observe the form and beauty of Sierra Nevada flora with pencil, pen or brush in hand. Andie will freely share her field-friendly tricks and techniques for capturing botanical gesture, detail, pattern, color, illumination, shadow, and for conjuring up a sense of the often overwhelming complexity of plants growing in the wild. Students will work with watercolor, gouache, pastel, pencil and ink, as they identify and render plants indoors and out, adding written notations and observations to their field journal pages along the way. Demonstrations and experiments will instruct how to effectively compose pages that can be completed on site as well as strategies to get enough down on paper to enable completion in the studio. Both traditional and contemporary art approaches will be demonstrated and used to make wild sketches, luminous color studies and accurate botanical illuminations, creating quilt-like field journal pages to document summer's fleeting moments and flora.

The work will be encouraging and stimulating for all experience levels, including beginners.

Instructor

Andie Thrams is a painter, book artist and educator whose work is currently focused on wild western forests. Her images and books are widely exhibited, published and collected. In addition to her courses for SFSU, Andie also teaches in her Sierra Nevada studio, for the Oakland Museum of California, Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, Art Institute at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Yosemite Association. She has been Artist in Residence at Glacier National Park and Sitka Center for Art & Ecology. Andie holds a BA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley.

Class Schedule

Plan to arrive at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus on July 16, 2008. We can get acquainted that evening, but the class will begin at 7:30 am on Thursday July 17th. The class will end on the afternoon of July 20th.

Supply List

Instructor will provide handouts for which there will be an additional $5 handout/materials fee. Students should bring the following:

Recommended watercolors for getting started

Camping gear

Helpful Reading