Drawn from Life A Live In-Studio Botanical Coloured Pencil Intensive, Salt Spring Island
Daily Outline

Daily Schedule 9:00 - 12:15 Morning session (15-minute break included) 12:15 - 1:15 Lunch 1:15 - 4:30 Afternoon session (15-minute break included) Journal work woven throughout each day. Personal and group feedback throughout all sessions.
Day 1: Seeing as a Colourist / Surface and Light Observational warm-ups from live specimens. Contour, proportion, and accurate shape-finding. Introduction to the particular challenges of botanical subjects - symmetry and the complexity of colour in living plants. Introduction to coloured pencil techniques for botanical, layering, pressure, and blending. Moving into surface and light - understanding how mark-making and paper surface affect colour, and how light defines form in botanical subjects.
Day 2: The Complexity of Green & Botanical Colours and Transparency. A focused study of green & botanical colour - how many greens exist in a single leaf, which greens to reach for, and how to quiet bright oversaturated greens using analogous, adjacent, and complementary colours. How light and shadow shift temperature, and how layering builds what you actually see rather than what you expect to see in your specimens. An introduction to transparency - how to render what light does as it passes through petals and leaves. Working from a single specimen, students begin a sustained study exploring petal texture, leaf surface, and waxy versus matte finishes.
Day 3: Colour Relationships and Layering. Building colour through layering warm, cool, and neutral tones. Mixing and blending with OMS. Understanding temperature and value in organic forms. Working toward accurate, realistic rendering - form, structure, and the relationship between light and shadow in living plants. Lost and found edges in petals and leaves and other plants. Extended free drawing time from live specimens.
Day 4: Composition and Accuracy Moving from single specimen study to considered composition - from traditional botanical layout to non-traditional approaches. Negative space, balance, and accuracy in drawing the relationship between elements. Continued focus on realistic form, colour, and surface. Extended free drawing time with sustained work on individual pieces.
Day 5: Completion and Reflection Students bring their work toward completion with extended free drawing time. The emphasis is on accuracy, form, and colour working together in service of a finished, realistic piece. Group critique at the end of the day - colour decisions, compositional choices, what worked, and what to carry forward independently.