BENGALURU: The natural landscape of Lalbagh came alive on paper this weekend when a group of artists came together to connect through botanical illustrations. The artists, who were taking part in a workshop conducted by the green music festival, Echoes of Earth, focused on nature journaling – the practice of drawing and writing in response to one’s observation of nature. “Nature journaling combines the experience of being in nature with art.
When you draw things, you observe the minute details more than you do while photographing them. It helps you register and process the details, and keeping all the drawings together in a journal helps you notice and analyse patterns better,” said Nirupa Rao, a Bengaluru-based botanical illustrator who hosted the workshop.
The event helped artists discover new ways to connect with the outdoors, increase mindfulness and capacity to appreciate everyday views, and improve their artistic skills. “It allowed us to connect with nature and observe different details of it. I learnt to look at nature from a more geometric point of view instead of an observational or artistic point of view,” Trisha Rao, an artist, said.
The feeling was echoed by Arpita Kothari, an architect. “Sketching is something that I really enjoy, and getting someone’s perspectives and applying it, is great. Today, I looked into the tinier details and drew them on paper,” she said. Not all participants, however, had a background in art. Arathi Punitha, a doctor, said she found the experience “spiritual” as it reminded her of her childhood. “I used to come here to play. And I had never imagined that I would come and sit under a tree 50 years later, and spend the morning in such away. This is the first time I tried to live to sketch,” she added.
The workshop also offered an opportunity to many to make a start in the field. “I learnt the basics to draw leaves and flowers, how to scale an object before you start drawing. The host gave us a brief about how to plot points and join dots, just like a graph, to get an essence of scale. It was fun,” said Vaishnavi Balusu.
The Echoes of Earth festival will be held in December this year around a theme titled ‘The Sanctuary’, which aims to create awareness about endangered species through a series of workshops. The events seek to raise public sensitivity towards the environment while bringing people close to nature and encouraging them to find connections with their city’s natural heritage.