The Dance of Line and Color '26

Madeline Island is the perfect location to explore with a sketchbook!

In this sketching workshop, we’ll create visual stories in our sketchbooks with line and watercolor, as we explore how to convey light, shadow and atmosphere in the
landscape.

We’ll explore how to create a sense of depth in our sketches, to give our stories a feeling of place. We’ll compose scenes with light and shadow, and then we’ll see how atmosphere colors the landscape. We’ll use color to describe the mood and feeling of the location, and finally we’ll have a bit of practice adding people to our scenes! We’ll spend some time in the studio for watercolor mixing and experimenting, and then head out to a variety of beautiful locations for practice.

I’m thrilled to present this sketching workshop in a 5-day format, to explore and
experiment with you in the beautiful Madeline Island landscape!

The journey will begin with line, and we’ll start by experimenting with all kinds of lines and marks that we can achieve with a variety of tools while we explore our beautiful location. This is a great way to develop your personal vocabulary of expressive lines to create a lively visual story. Your lines are as individual as your handwriting—you can dramatically change expression with your variety of marks.

We’ll be sketching outdoor spaces, so we’ll explore a variety of ways to understand depth and dimension, as you discover how to select and compose your unique point of view!

Color can convey not only what you see, but also what you feel. We’ll focus on what color brings to the picture, especially depth, atmosphere, and emotion. We’ll have some fun “color labs”, to practice and understand important things about color, and practice using watercolor techniques with confidence. We’ll take our experiments further on location—exploring how to use color to bring impact to your sketches.

Finally, we’ll bring expressive lines and color together with a variety of color and compositional strategies, and we’ll also practice the fine art of leaving something out for impact! That’s the beauty of a sketch—you decide just what you want to include!

Bring your curiosity, and get ready to play and experiment!

A roadmap for the week...

Day 1:
AM: Taking a Journey with Line
—Expressive line drawing with ink and pencil. Getting to know your tools, expanding your line vocabulary, choosing your view with framing, leaving things out for impact.
PM: Sketching Outdoor Spaces—Finding your Point of View
—Learning cues to depth with line drawing: drawing a scene with overlapping elements. Finding your anchor: finding the horizon/eye level, drawing a high horizon and a low horizon (sea and sky, etc.). Sketching what’s up close, what’s far away.
Day 2:
AM: Color Lab 1 Light and Shadow
—Watercolor basics, creating a full range of values from light to dark, painting a simple subject from nature in monochrome with values.
PM: Sketching Light and Shadow in Monochrome
—Painting in monochrome on location: composing a sketch with NOTAN (the harmony of light and dark), sketching a scene with a full range of values.
Day 3:
AM: Color Lab 2 Experimenting with Color
—Understanding color temperature and color relationships, creating “juicy” washes, mixing colors, especially a range of warm and cool greens.
PM: Sketching Warm and Cool Colors on Location
—Using a simple palette, we focus on a scene to mix greens on location, and practice using color to convey depth. Bring together color temperature, light and dark!
Day 4:
AM: The Dance of Line and Color
—We bring the expressive line together with color shapes. We begin with a line
drawing, and with a simple palette, we use confident color washes to bring mood and atmosphere to the sketch. Creating focus with detail, contrast and color.
PM: Sketching People in your Scene
—We find a lively location, and practice a few people-sketching basics. How to add people to your scene with line and a simple color palette.
Day 5:
Bringing it all together
We look back on what we have studied so far, and choose a favorite approach to wrap up the workshop.

Workshop Schedule:
Sunday Night: Welcome Reception at 6pm
Monday - Friday: 9am - 4pm

*Schedule Subject to change*