Wellington Botanic Gardens Art Residency continued

Attendees sketching in the succulent garden

As part of my art residency at the Wellington Botanical Gardens, I was expected to run up to two workshops for adults.  There is no provision there for running workshops for children yet.

My workshop, Beginners Watercolour Botanicals sold out pretty quickly - capped at 15 and has a long waiting list of people hoping for a second workshop (date is to be confirmed). I was impressed and pleased with the standard of work produced. We focused mostly on colour mixing and blending wet on wet watercolour technique on leaves. The workshops are three hours long so not a lot of time for getting too complicated.

The second workshop I ran was Nature Journalling around the garden in three locations. We had 14 registrations for this but several didn’t turn up. I chose a uninspiring spot to start with so as to show that journalling can take place in any part of the environment. But as luck would have it the kākā had taken over the area in their search for new trees to strip! (The gardens had closed the day before to allow the extraction of two large redwoods that were destroyed by kākā - fortunately they don’t seem to be targeting native trees there.) So we were kept entertained as we focussed on comparing and contrasting simple leaves.

The second site was in the fragrant garden where we compared and contrasted two different flowering bulbs, noting the fragrance of each as well as flower and plant structure and colour.

Third and final site was in the full warmth of the sunshine in the succulent garden. This was a great spot to finish the session in, with its myriad of aloes and other exotic species- I even discovered the Crown of Thorns plant which I had heard of but never seen.

It was heartening to see that some of the people took on board the three simple journaling prompts from John Muir Laws - I see, I wonder, it reminds me of. These are great for anyone stuck with what to write or how to observe. However, others just wanted to sketch and note a few details on the side.  And that’s fine - I just want to see people outdoors connecting with the natural world around them journaling or sketching in the way that best suits them. My message really is don’t strive to make great art, strive instead to be the best observer and great art will eventually follow.

Student work

Back indoors working with watercolour