Illuminations Workshop

Add unique, personal luster to your journal with illustrations and sketches

Join a small group of like-minded peers in an online workshop to add a new skill to your creative repertoire.

Sessions starting in October 2021

eight 2-hour sessions without leaving home

Acquire confidence in graphic expression

achieve tangible progress towards your goals

Enhance Your Journal with Personal Illustrations

An illustrated handwritten page was once called an “illuminated” text. What a wonderful adjective! Illustrations brighten up the page, make it more memorable, and can even enter a kind of dialogue with the written words.

There has always been a close affinity between drawing and handwriting. Indeed, if brain scans are anything to go by, writing is merely a kind of drawing: the same parts of the brain light up in both cases. Your synapses get a much different workout, in any event, when you write or draw compared to when you strike keys and see letters appear on a screen. So if you already keep a manuscript journal, you’re half-way there.

In this workshop we will start with the basics: materials; thinking graphically; color; proportion; perspective; contrast; shadow and light… You will draw in every session, and there will be plenty of opportunity to handle your questions and doubts.

Whether your intention is to add illustrations to text or to start a sketch diary with captions, let me show you how simple it can be to add “wow” to your journal pages by “illuminating” them.

I'll be forever grateful to Greg for what I've learned during his course on journaling. He is a passionate reader and a natural teacher. He has a "lead by example" teaching style that motivated me and the entire group. With Greg's help, I was able to re-learn how to love writing, and how to let writing be an integral part of improving my overall well being.

Aaron Curtis

Front-End Developer

Greg creates a calm, creative and supportive atmosphere in the Life Sentences workshop. His approach to journal-writing is inspiring. I really enjoyed the casual, relaxed vibe at each session and hearing my fellow classmates' writings. I came out of the experience having formed a daily habit of writing that I feel like I now can't live without!

Liz Demarest

Communications Professional

This was more than a writing class. It was an inspiring community where listening other people's stories inspired me to write more. Thanks to Greg, I started my journal and now I see writing as part of my life. I also really liked the reflective aspect of this workshop. Greg is a dedicated and experienced writer. Seeing his own journal amazed me.

Yi Ma

Investment Banking Analyst

I couldn't have imagined the improvement this class, and the in-depth journaling habit it has fostered, would make in my thought life. I have much more clarity, and routinely delve deeper than I would otherwise, both on and off the page. It's particularly useful for an artistic life, because you record, explore, and remember ideas that otherwise might have flown away moments after they arrived. It also banishes a relationship with the self where you are that person in your house with whom you avoid eye contact, replacing it with the heady expansion of getting to know someone.

Amy Denninghoff

Professional Artist

Greg creates a wonderful mix of structure and curated serendipity. While learning and practicing a wide variety of journaling techniques and approaches, we also formed a warm and collegial bond with our fellow journalers. Whether you are dedicated to keeping a journal or just want to give it a try for the duration of the course, you will finish with a Swiss Army knife of writing approaches and techniques, which you will undoubtedly use in your personal, academic and/or professional life.

Richard Boly

Former Career Diplomat

Though I do a lot of writing, I haven't journalled regularly for many years. This course re-ignited a neglected practice and brought with it Greg's immense wisdom about the process and what we produced. I am still journaling regularly and find it a linchpin for my day and an opportunity to give growing space to thoughts which would otherwise have disappeared with the sunset.

Jack Peterson

Management Consultant

YOUR HOST AND INSTRUCTOR

Gregory Robison

Although I have kept a journal for more than 50 years, and have been sketching for even longer than that, it didn’t occur to me for decades to join the two activities. Sketchbooks are for sketching, and journals are for writing. Or so I thought.

I absorbed a tacit message from school that serious writers do all their work with words, and only with words. Painters meanwhile are mute, and should be. I ought to have followed my instincts and recognized that so many authors I actually enjoyed early in life — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Ludwig Bemelmens, James Thurber, Henrik Wilhelm Van Loon, and many others didn’t hesitate to doodle, illustrate, and play with images as well as with words. And many visual artists are or were excellent writers.

I now acknowledge that creativity comes from a deep inner place that nourishes all the arts, and cross-fertilization and blending of all sorts are to be encouraged, not suppressed. When I look back at my own journals now, I immediately flip to the pages that are illustrated before looking at anything else. That ought to have been a cue that graphic content enhances the long-term interest, even for myself in my own work.

Here’s where you can peak at my approach to drawing in the tradition called plein-air (i.e., from life, on location, at a single sitting): http://www.seeingandsketching.com

Your play with words will make your drawing better, and vice versa. I look forward to exploring that reality with you in this workshop.

YOUR REGISTRATION INCLUDES

Use this time of forced isolation to explore your creativity, hold yourself accountable, and produce some awesome work.

How will this help me get unstuck?

A writer is someone who writes. Whether it’s a novel; a memoir; an op-ed column; a venture idea; a marketing pitch; a sermon; a family history; a collection of poems; a private diary or journal; a play for stage or screen… It’s all writing. Whatever its purpose or final form, it’s all worthwhile.

But like all creative work, it takes discipline, skill, and the right attitude. Producing anything worthwhile in this world is a struggle.

This workshop will dispel the illusions and misconceptions about that struggle — illusions and misconceptions that may have kept you from cultivating your creativity and achieving your goals.