Nature Journaling Workshop with Julie Brett

When: 10am-12noon Wednesdays

Term 2 dates: Wednesday 26th April to Wednesday 28th June

Cost: $33 per person per class

Where: Good Earth Bookshop, Wentworth Falls, Dharug and Gundungurra Country

About the class:

Nature journaling is a relaxing and inspiring activity that helps us to take time to pay attention to nature, and find ways to creatively record information about seasons, animals, plants and other aspects of the natural world. In this ongoing weekly class, you will learn techniques in drawing, watercolour, and pen and ink sketching. All levels of artistic skill are welcome and activities can be tailored to where individual students are at. The classes will be indoors and we will be working off found objects, still life, photographs and reference books. Students will be encouraged to take their own photographs to work with, and to make observations in the garden or the bush reserve that can be brought into the class. The skills learned in class will deepen your understanding of how to record what you see in nature, increase your artistic skills, and help you to develop ways of seeing changes that help you to map out the seasonal changes, understand ecological communities, and identify different plants, animals, geology and other aspects of the natural world.

We acknowledge that this class is being held on Dharug and Gundungurra country and efforts will be made to include learning about being respectful towards local First Nations traditions, language, places, people and knowledge. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and to any Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander people in the community or who might join us in the class.

Your teacher:

Julie Brett is an artist and author who has been working with recording seasonal changes and learning about the natural world for many years. She has been trained in illustration at East Sydney Tech and has found nature journaling to be an excellent way of observing the seasons and local nature. She is an author in the area of Nature Spirituality and Druidry and this fit in well with her writing. Her first book was “Australian Druidry: Connecting with the Sacred Landscape” (2017) which explores how the Celtic nature spirituality of Druidry can be adapted to be relevant in the Australian landscape with its unique seasons, plants, animals and history. Significantly, she is well known for developing a local wheel of the year for the Sydney area and encouraging her readers to learn more about local First Nations calendars where this is available. Her second book was “Belonging to the Earth: Nature Spirituality in a Changing World” which addressed the responses of the nature spirituality community to the climate crisis and other environmental disasters we have faced in recent years such as fire, flood and the pandemic. It included interviews with First Nations community leaders about how we can all learn to look after Country together. An important part of this is to learn about the natural world around us and make observations of it. Nature journaling is a part of that work for Julie today, and hopefully will be for you too!

If you have the following, please bring it along, otherwise we will discuss materials and tools during the first class:

Waterproof black ink pen eg. Uniball
Watercolour paint set
Small watertight container for water
Paintbrushes
Watercolour paper journal with thick paper – 200-300g
Thin white posca pen