Online Class: Earth Day Art | Intro to Nature Journaling

Just in time for Earth Day, join us for an introduction to nature journaling and start your own art project.

In this class, teaching artist Sudeshna Sengupta will explain how to capture the essential beauty found in leaves, seed pods, and other plant specimens using watercolor, watercolor pencils, graphite pencils, and ink pens. 

To honor the presence of nature in our everyday lives, participants are welcome to use their own favorite houseplants, fruits, vegetables, seedpods, or garden cuttings to draw from for this class. They are also welcome to follow along with the setup that will be used during the live demonstration. 

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This class is suitable for youth ages 12 and up. Children are welcome to participate alongside their adults.

This program will take place via the video conferencing app – ZOOM. Details for accessing the Zoom meeting will be with your receipt upon registering and again sent via email the day prior. Please register in advance in order to access the program.

Note that all program times are in Mountain Time.

Supplies Needed for this Class:

• Watercolor Journal or pads and or Mixed-media drawing pad in Strathmore 400 series or a similar or better brand in any size between 7” x 10” and 11” x 15”. Thicker paper (140 lb or higher) is better.
• A set of watercolor pencils.
• Graphite pencils 2b, 4B, 6B.
• Pencil sharpener.
• White plastic eraser.
• Watercolor round brushes – 3 to 5 in the range of sizes 6 to 12.
• 2 to 3 Blending stumps (AKA Tortillons, often comes with drawing pencil sets)
• Q-tips for blending pencils and watercolor pencils.
• A set of watercolor tubes and or pans.
• Tombow Dual Tipped Brush Pens in shades of grays, black, or colors of your choice.
• Small watercolor palette (ideally a circular palette with 12 wells to organize the paints like a color wheel).
• Glass Jars or plastic containers for holding water.
• Waterproof Gel Pens or pens with black or sepia-colored waterproof ink
• Optional, especially if planning to prepare for on-location sketching and journaling in the future: Sheets of paper towel, Baby Wipes, and Q-tips, water-soluble graphite pencil, white wax crayon or a small piece of white candle for resist techniques, clips and or masking tape to keep the paper flat if the pad is larger, a couple of water-fillable Brush Pens.

About the Instructor:

Sudeshna Sengupta’s career as a teaching artist spans multiple decades, continents, and cultures that inform her pedagogy for decolonizing studio art. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1985 from Visva-Bharati University, founded by the first non-European Nobel Laureate (1913) and humanist poet Rabindranath Tagore.

After teaching art and design at the college level in New Delhi, Seattle, and California, she taught at New Mexico State University-Alamogordo, where she established its first intaglio printmaking studio in 1995. Besides the O’Keeffe Museum, Sengupta teaches credit courses with the School of Art & Design of the Santa Fe Community College.

Her etchings and lithographs from the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi have been featured in a landmark exhibition on Women Printmakers of India at the NGMA-New Delhi in India. Her work is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Association Musée d’Art Contemporain, France; Kala Institute, Berkeley, and more.

Sengupta also conducts workshops, short courses, lectures, and community-based art events focusing on multicultural and intercultural experiences that emphasize human, cultural, and environmental connectedness through creativity.

To learn more, please visit notes-and-doodles.com and visit her Instagram @santafe_online_art_studio

Registration

This class is being offered on a sliding scale. Your class fee helps to sustain the variable costs associated with hosting this program. We appreciate your support.

$15 minimal fee.

$25 covers the cost of the class.

$40 covers the cost of the class, plus a contribution to support educational programs.