Keeping a nature journal is a longstanding tradition that unifies the disciplines of art and science. It can be meditative experience, a record of observations, a fertile ground for new ideas, and a record of personal learning and exploration. Join us to learn a variety of techniques for slowing down, sharpening your senses, and recording your observations, as well as fun exercises to help you look at the world from a new perspective!

About the Instructor:

Sarah Drummond is a Colorado artist and naturalist who has kept nature journals since the age of twelve. Her background in biology contributes to her passion for accuracy in her artwork, and she finds that the two disciplines inform and enrich each other. She prefers to work from life in the field, often through binoculars. Her artwork is known for its realism, color, and sense of storytelling. She works mainly in watercolor and block prints.

Sarah does freelance illustration work and created a wordless children’s book entitled Raven and the Red Ball, published by Pomegranate Press. As a teacher, she works with everyone from elementary school students to college attendees on nature journaling, watercolor, and printmaking. Some of her recent exhibitions include Birds in Art 2021, 2022, and 2023 at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Museum, Wausau WI; the David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year Exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London UK from 2010 through 2023; and ArtsThrive Albuquerque 2023 – 2025.

Sarah feels fortunate to have grown up in a creative family who encouraged her interdisciplinary interests. She benefitted from summer art classes in a variety of media through her teens and took a tandem undergraduate degree in biology and art. Mentors like Ann Zwinger and Charles Prutzer played an important role in her artistic development. She and her partner live and create in southwest Colorado.

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