Category: Workshops

Gubbio, Italy – September 19 to 26, 2025

We are excited to be working the the Winslow Art Center in 2025. This retreat promises to be creative, relaxing, and luxorious. The location at the Castello de Petroia in the Umbrian countryside is beautiful. Our Sketchbook Immersion is inspired the Italian landscape and culture. Highlights include –

• “Alla Prima” Watercolor Sketch
• Color-mixing for harmony and sizzle
• Finding your voice and mark-making language
• Observational sketch with line and wash
• The Power of Simple Design

Inspired by the natural beauty and culture of Umbria, you’ll explore techniques and design principles in a personal and intuitive way without fear of criticism or failure. Every day we will face down the terror of the blank page, adopting an attitude of experimentation and play. Your sketchbook will serve not just as a place to practice techniques, but also as a record of your experiences in Italy and your personal artistic discoveries.

Even if you’ve never picked up a paintbrush, these immersive sessions will awaken the artist within you and help you make peace with your inner critic. Above all, we will have a blast!

Winslow Art Center will arrange a Zoom meeting in advance with participants and the instructors to help you get ready for the best possible experience – preparing your materials, packing your gear and developing the right mindset for painting with ease and satisfaction.

Esalen Institute – November 4 – 8, 2024
Tom Birmingham & Erin Lee Gafill

Learn to tap the source and break through creative barriers during this hands-on workshop. Together, we’ll explore a variety of mediums and techniques to find entry into creative expression, including:

• Color blocking
• Watercolor sketching
• Observational image making
• Timed free writing
• Abstracting from nature

The poet Rumi speaks of a river of joy that courses through the world. Through these creative practices, we invite that river to flow freely through us and the powerful energy of Esalen’s natural environment to fill us, dissolving internal blocks and flowing through our hands onto the page.

The core of this workshop is inspiration and energy, but we’ll explore techniques and design principles that will inform your aesthetic and native mark-making language in an intuitive way, without fear of criticism or failure.

We’ll provide multimedia sketchbooks to fill with your artistic experiments. They’ll serve as a repository, a totem, a teacher, and a reminder of what you can achieve when you dip into the river of joy. The blank white pages, which you will fill with a treasured collection of artistic ideas, will be a metaphor for our process.

Whether you are a seasoned professional in the arts or you’ve never picked up a paintbrush, these immersive sessions will awaken the artist within and help you make peace with your inner critic.

There is a $60 material fee for this workshop. All essential materials, including acrylic paints, watercolors, paintbrushes, writing pens, collage materials, sketchbooks, and painting surfaces — everything you need to participate fully in each exercise. Feel free to bring your favorite pens, brushes, or other art-making tools.

Recommended Reading: Drinking From a Cold Spring, a Little Book of Hope, and Color Duets by Erin Lee Gafill