Mindful Drawing: Connecting With Nature

A 6-week course in mindfulness through drawing and nature

💻 Format: Primarily self-study with optional live meet-ups
🎟 Fee: £80 (Standard Rate) or £60 (Concessionary)
✳️ CPD: Yes, plus we're a BAMBA-approved organisation
🙋‍♀️ Suitable For: Everyone — no mindfulness or drawing experience needed!

Jump to booking

There are many ways to practise mindfulness. Paying attention to the breath. Tuning into the body. Noticing sound, sensation, the small details of everyday life.

This course offers another way in: through drawing.

Developed and led by artist and Breathworks-trained mindfulness teacher Clare Barton-Harvey, this 6-week course uses drawing as a gateway into present-moment awareness, bringing the qualities of mindfulness alive through looking, touching, and making marks on a page.

You don't need to be able to draw. You don't need any experience with art. What matters is your willingness to observe and explore the natural world around you with a curious and kind attention.

Each session weaves together a guided meditation and a drawing practice, using nature as the thread that runs through both. Over six weeks, you'll find that the two deepen each other in ways that are hard to anticipate: mindfulness sharpens the seeing, and drawing brings the mindfulness into the hands and eyes and the body.

Details

Start time: Thursday 13th August, 18:00 BST

End Time: Thursday 24th September, 19:00 BST

(UK time; see this Time Zone Converter for your time zone)

Please note, bookings for this event will close on Wednesday 12th August, 15:00 UK time.

Course Format

This is a self-study course, designed to offer flexibility around how and when you engage with the materials. 

The course comprises six sessions, so you could do it over six weeks, or you could do it over one week if you would prefer a more immersive experience.

Each session builds on the next, so we do recommend doing it sequentially, but feel free to follow your intuition and explore it in whatever way works for you — whether that's ng up the order or repeating sessions.

Three optional live Zoom sessions are woven into the course — a welcome at the start, a mid-course check-in, and a closing session at the end. These are a chance to connect with Clare and your fellow participants, share your practice, and ask questions. They are warmly encouraged but not required.

A private, moderated discussion space on our online platform is also available throughout, where you can share drawings, reflect on your experience, and learn from others in the group.

Places are capped at 40 to keep the community feel genuine.

If you're looking for a programme with teacher and group interaction at its core — this may not be the right fit. You might instead like to explore the 8-week Mindfulness for Health and Stress courses or the HEALS wellness programme. But if you'd value a flexible, self-directed practice with opportunities for connection — we think you'll very much enjoy this format.

Who Is This For?

This course is for anyone who'd like to explore mindfulness through a more creative and embodied practice. You might:

• Be new to mindfulness and looking for a gentle, accessible way in
• Be an experienced meditator looking for a fresh and embodied way to practise
• Be curious about drawing but never quite found your way in
• Be someone who finds it hard to sit still, and is drawn to a more active form of mindfulness
• Be living with chronic pain or illness, and looking for a gentle creative practice to support your wellbeing
• Simply love nature, and want to spend more time really looking at it

You do not need any drawing ability or prior art experience. This course is not about producing beautiful pictures. It is about learning to see — and to be present with what you see.

✳️ Mindfulness Teacher? This course counts as Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for mindfulness teachers and trainees. Breathworks is a BAMBA-approved organisation.

What You'll Receive Each Week:

Each session includes:

🎥 1 x introduction video from Clare, introducing the session's theme and what to bring
🔔 1 x guided meditation — each one drawing on a core Breathworks practice
🎨 1 x drawing practice, demonstrated and guided by Clare
📝 1 x handout with resources, techniques, and home practice ideas to explore through the week

You'll also have access to:

💻 A private, moderated discussion space within our online learning platform
🤝 3 x live Zoom sessions with Clare and your group — for shared practice, Q&A, and connection

How To Access The Course

Your course materials will be housed in our online Community of Practice. To join the course, we'll ask you to create a free account, if you do not already have one. You will be part of a private space visible to just your cohort, and will receive lifelong access to the materials, even after the course ends. The live meet-ups will take place on a video conferencing software called Zoom. 

Course Schedule

New session content releases at 7:00am UK time each Thursday.

The three live Zoom sessions are here to support your journey — they're not mandatory, so come to as many as you find helpful.

Each 60-minute live session is a chance to:

• Connect with Claire and others in the group
• Share your drawings and reflections
• Ask questions and deepen your understanding

🎥 Please note: these sessions will NOT be recorded.

Live session times: 🇬🇧 18:00 - 19:00 UK/BST

Click here to find the time for your part of the world.

What to Bring:

Each session uses simple, inexpensive materials — mostly pencils, charcoal and paper. Download the full list below for a session-by-session list. If you don't have everything, Clare will show you how to adapt with whatever you have to hand. And of course, this is your practice — feel free to experiment with whatever medium you like!

Download the Materials List

The Six Sessions

Each week, a new session unlocks — with an introduction from Clare, a guided meditation, a drawing practice, and a handout to take you further.

Nature is the subject throughout. Each session, you'll slow down, look closely, and find that there is always more to see than you first thought.

Session 1 — Everyday Wonder

Mindful looking and the art of seeing

We begin with the simplest and perhaps the most radical practice of all: really looking. Using openness and curiosity — what mindfulness teachers sometimes call beginner's mind — we explore how drawing can help us see the world afresh. Nature objects are our subject matter: something you enjoy looking at, held in your hands, looked at slowly and with care.

🎵 Meditation: Body, breath and the quality of sensation

Session 2 — Drawing Touch

Sensory awareness and the feel of materials

This session explores the role of feeling in drawing — not just what we see, but what we sense. Working with charcoal and natural objects with interesting textures, we explore how bringing mindful attention to touch can deepen our connection to our materials and our subject matter. We also look at one of the key Breathworks teachings: the distinction between primary experience (what we directly sense) and secondary experience (our thoughts and stories about it).

🎵 Meditation: Grounding in the body — contact, sensation, breath

Session 3 — Seeing in Shapes

Drawing landscapes with fresh eyes

Here we turn to the wider world — landscapes, seascapes, skyscapes — and discover a way of seeing that cuts through assumption. Rather than drawing "sky" or "sea", we learn to see pure shape: the relationships between forms, light pools, edges, and spaces. A simple technique called pentimenti — sketchy, exploratory mark-making — helps us stay free and curious rather than tight and analytical.

🎵 Meditation: Warmth and kindness — sunlight at the heart

Session 4 — Drawing with Colour

Nourishing the senses through colour and landscape

Colour arrives in session four — and with it, a particular invitation: to notice what gives you pleasure. Working with soft chalk pastels or coloured pencils, we explore layering, blending and the relationship between colours in a landscape. The mindfulness practice this week draws on the Breathworks teaching of Treasure of Pleasure — learning to notice and receive enjoyable experience as a genuine act of self-nourishment, which in turn supports both our resilience and our creativity.

🎵 Meditation: Finding Pleasure — and receiving what is enjoyable

Session 5 — Drawing Light

Tone, shadow, and the open heart

Light and dark. The interplay of tone is one of the most powerful tools a drawer has — and one of the most revealing to practise mindfully. This session introduces hatching, crosshatching, blending and expressive tonal mark-making. The meditation this week is the Breathworks Open Heart Practice: a practice of turning towards the full range of our experience — including difficulty — with awareness and a quality of kindness.

🎵 Meditation: The Open Heart — turning towards experience with kindness

Session 6 — Mind Set Free

Play, trees, and the freedom to follow your interest

The final session opens up into experimentation and play. With trees as our subject, we're invited to follow our curiosity wherever it leads — working larger, using colour expressively, letting the tree take us on an imaginative journey. The meditation connects us to a sense of deep rootedness and wide-reaching connection: with ourselves, with nature, and with all living things.

🎵 Meditation: The tree — roots, breath, and connection to all life

Meet Your Teacher: 

Clare Barton-Harvey

Clare Barton Harvey has been practising mindfulness and meditation since 1993, and trained with Breathworks as a mindfulness teacher in 2007. She is also a practising artist, with a Masters in drawing from the Royal Drawing School, whose work centres on nature and nature connection.

Clare specialises in drawing and painting with mindfulness — two practices she has come to see as deeply complementary. Together, they open up a greater sense of freedom, enjoyment and confidence in making art, while also supporting a richer and more connected way of being in the world.

She is delighted to have devised this course with Breathworks and to be offering it to you.

Course Fee & Financial Support

Breathworks is a UK registered charity with a mission to make mindfulness accessible to everyone. When you purchase a ticket for one of our events, you are not only investing in your own wellbeing, but paying it forward to someone else in need. All profits are reinvested to support our charitable work, helping us cover essential costs like staff, operations, and expanding our impact.

We're offer two different pricing options to those wishing to join us: 

We trust our participants to assess their eligibility honestly and ask you to consider the Standard Rate if you possibly can, to keep our offering sustainable. If you have any questions or would like to discuss your situation, please contact us here.

Discounts for Accredited Breathworks Teachers

If you are an accredited Breathworks Teacher, you are eligible for 10% off your place (bursary places not included). Details of how to access your discounted rate are on the Community of Practice Teachers & Trainee's Group.

Cancellation Policy

The following proportion of your fee will be refundable if you cancel your place on the event:

• Up to 7 days before the event starts you will receive a refund of any course fees paid, less a £25 admin fee.
• If cancelled within 7 days of the start date, we cannot refund any of the fees paid.
• Up to 7 days before the event starts, you can transfer your booking (and all fees paid) to another comparable event.
• Refunds will not be given after the course has commenced eg if you decide to leave the course early.