Workshops at Nourish Gardens
I had the pleasure of teaching two workshops last weekend at Nourish Gardens on Waiheke Island. Nourish Gardens is a specialty cut flower farm of beautifully sustainable grown florals. As a keen gardener myself, it was a delight to be teaching among masses of beautiful flowers.
Learning Calligraphy
In the morning, Christy, the passionate gardener at Nourish Gardens welcomed me to the harvest shed. I set up the calligraphy kits for the first workshop of the day- Beginners Modern Calligraphy. Fourteen keen participants arrived and we started by having a chat about all the different projects you can use calligraphy for. Learning calligraphy is perfect for addressing envelopes, making greeting cards, gift tags and place names. You’re really only limited by your imaginations to what you can use calligraphy for! We then learnt about the best equipment to use for dip pen calligraphy. After that we moved onto the foundation letters of a beautiful Modern calligraphy font. By the end of the lesson all the participants were writing their own names.
Learning Modern Floral Illustrating
After the most delicious lunch and a quick garden tour we started the afternoon workshop – Modern Flower Illustrating. We started by looking at the best supplies to use. Then we learned the simple instructions needed to capture flower shapes using line art. The 15 keen learners then chose flowers to draw with Nourish garden’s flower fields providing the inspiration. At the end of the class, everyone was producing some beautiful illustrations (even though many had told me beforehand that they couldn’t draw at all!).
The day flew by and we all had loads of fun doing calligraphy and drawing gorgeous flowers. I’ve often said if I wasn’t an artist I would be a florist. So teaching workshops in the gardens was perfect.
With thanks
You can read more about Christy and the wonderful Nourish Gardens here.
Photography by John Hagen
To find out more about learning calligraphy check here https://inkberry.co.nz/product-category/calligraphy-lessons/