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Title: Nature Journaling: Drawing, Data, and Discovery
Scheduling Details: June 7–13, 2026
Description: Nature Journaling is a powerful tool for building observation skills, developing curiosity about the environment, and exploring new scientific questions. In this workshop, students will learn drawing skills in graphite pencil, ink pen, and color pencil, with an emphasis on techniques that are useful for field sketching. Students will also use nature journaling prompts for collecting data, making measurements, recording sensory information, and observational writing. There will be a mix of working in the studio (lab) and in the field. We will also cover special topics such as drawing through a microscope, handling unusual surface textures, looking for Fibonacci patterns, and innovative ways to record seasonal change at the same site over multiple visits. This seminar will be useful for biology and environmental science educators who wish to incorporate nature journaling in their instruction; field scientists who make use of field notes and sketches; and naturalists who want to enrich their relationship with nature through art and science
Nancy Lowe (science...@gmail.com) is an artist, naturalist, and educator. For over two decades she has taught art-science workshops at colleges, universities, biological field stations and marine labs, high schools, science museums, arts centers, and other institutions. She also teaches faculty professional development workshops in using art as an education tool for the biology and ecology classroom, lab, and field. She is a Bullard Fellow at Harvard Forest, with a goal of making art about complexity & emergence, and developing best practices for art-science residencies. Since 2021, she has led Ecotones, a network of biological field stations and marine labs that offer arts programs. She has also catalyzed and facilitated art-science exhibits, performances, and other art-science collaborations. She founded and directed Art + Science In the Field: asIF Center, an art-science residency program in the biologically diverse Southern Appalachian mountains. She worked as a lab technician in three different research labs over a period of a decade, focusing on botany, entomology, and landscape ecology, where she also initiated multiple citizen science projects and art-forscience-communication projects. In her creative practice she uses drawing & painting, fiber, and mixed media to explore themes of ecology and evolutionary biology. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums in the US and Europe. She has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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