Mindful Journalling and Nature - Online Courses - Adult Learning

This course is about observing and recording nature, with various media and writing notes to create a memorable journal. You will experience enhanced connections to your environment, improve your observation skills and enjoy creativity.

During the course we will be focusing on using a wide range of techniques including sketching, watercolour, fine liner and collage. We will experiment with these processes on their own and in combination. You will then select some of these techniques to develop your own journal. We will focus on the changing natural environment, throughout the season and record our feelings in our journals, through art.

Experience in drawing is helpful to create a successful journal, but support will be given to beginners. By the end of the course everyone will have explored and gained confidence in a range of experimental, creative techniques, produced some effective and pleasing journals, and gained skills for future art and design work.

Throughout the course, we will:

• Discuss how other artists have used experimental techniques in their work to explore ideas.

• Experiment successfully with text and printmaking techniques to explore ideas.

• Use painting and stenciling techniques to explore colour, layering and composition.

• Experiment with a range of mixed media confidently to produce images.

• Use vocational language confidently to explain your own work.

What you will need to bring to the course:

• A suitable book to create a journal, e.g a spiral-bound hardback sketch book)

• Sketching paper

• Pencil

• Crayon

• Basic watercolour paints

• Brush

• Fine-liner pen

Suggested reading for the course:

• Secrets of a Devon Wood/ a nature journal. Jo Brown

• The Laws guide to nature drawing and journaling / Laws Muir John.

• Emma's sketchbook : scenes of Nottinghamshire life in the 1840s. Gaunt, Richard.

If you receive certain benefits you will be offered the course for free, however if you have a financial barrier which may prevent you from enrolling on the course, please visit our funding page for further information.

Residency in England

To book and enrol on one of our courses, you must be living in England permanently and live outside of the devolved areas listed below or live within the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) devolved area (Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire).

• Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield 

• Cambridgeshire and Peterborough

• Greater London

• Greater Manchester

• Liverpool City Region

• Newcastle Upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland

• Tees Valley

• West of England

• West Midlands

• West Yorkshire

Residency Eligibility – other criteria

If you are living in the UK on a visa we will require evidence of this in order to be funded for the course, you can upload this evidence when you apply for the course. (completion of a questionnaire will be required).

Some exceptions may apply for example

• Your visa expiry date must be beyond the end of your course

• Asylum seekers must have lived in the UK for 6 months or longer while their claim is being considered by the Home Office

• You are receiving local authority support under section 23C or section 23CA of the Children Act 1989 or the Care Act 2014

Any learner who is not funded full cost fees would apply to these courses.