Nature as the Classroom
Coastal Georgia’s salt marshes and beaches become both subject and classroom for UGA students learning to illustrate the landscape.
As the immersive week on Jekyll Island nears its end, 11 students gather in the pre-dawn June light on Driftwood Beach. The striking landscape, renowned for its gnarled, sun-bleached driftwood stretching from sand to sea, fills with the quiet bustle of the students setting up their easels and watercolor palettes in the early morning light.
The sky begins to lighten, and they race to capture the dark outlines of the driftwood against the oranges and yellows of the sunrise. Many pause to take photos for personal keepsakes or for reference to complete their paintings long after the sun has risen.
(L-R) Abigail Ramos and JH Leigh share a laugh with Laura Binford as they look over each other’s drawings and paintings of Jekyll Island’s historic district.
Nearly two weeks earlier, most of these University of Georgia landscape architecture students had never touched watercolor. Many had limited experience drawing. Now they’re tackling sunrise and the challenge of its rapidly changing light.
JH Leigh, a fifth-year student who graduated after the summer session, strategically chose his sunrise location next to second-year undergraduate Abigail Ramos. She has a knack for representing the nuanced hues of light in her paintings. Today, Leigh is working on that, too.
“I didn’t think before this class that I would ever be able to watercolor in any sort of proficient capacity,” he says. “In two weeks, I’ve gone from having no idea how to approach this, to having at least a semi-competent idea of how to do it.”
Undergraduate Andrew Dickson sketches the Elder Mill Covered Bridge in Watkinsville, Georgia, during the field drawing and watercolor course.
A view of undergraduate Abigail Ramos’ watercolor painting as she finishes up a class exercise on painting palm trees in Jekyll Island’s historic district.
Undergraduate Loren O’Steen captures the sunrise on Jekyll Island’s Driftwood Beach with acrylic paints on a large canvas.
“Students end up producing better digital graphics with some hand instruction first because they know the rules, and they know how to capture the mechanics of what they’re seeing,” Davis says.
The class kicked off in Athens, with students setting up their easels, pencils, pens, and paints in UGA’s Founders Garden, downtown Athens, and the historic Elder Mill Covered Bridge in Watkinsville.
The second week brought them to Georgia’s coast: Jekyll Island’s historic district, Clam Creek Marsh, Driftwood Beach, and Cumberland Island.
This transformative experience reflects Davis’ longstanding passion for experiential learning and is one of UGA’s many domestic field study courses providing site-specific learning opportunities throughout the U.S.
Davis took his first group to Jekyll in 2011 after noticing a gap in the landscape architecture curriculum—students were missing hands-on drawing and painting experience. He set out to change that, and the 2025 group marks the 10th field drawing and watercolor class he’s taught on Georgia’s coast.
Students in the field drawing and watercolor course gather in front of the Dungeness Ruins for a group critique and show of their day’s work on Cumberland Island.
Graduate student Laura Binford looks at shore birds with binoculars on the Jekyll Island beach at dusk under a full moon.
Learning by Doing
Davis teaches the course by methodically building techniques and, with them, confidence.
Near the beginning of the Jekyll Island trip, students trekked out to the edge of Clam Creek Marsh. After an hour of sketching the marsh landscape, the students crowded around Davis’ easel for a watercolor demonstration.
Today’s lesson is in layering.
From the reflections of the marsh cordgrass on the water to a live oak casting a silhouette on the landscape, there’s a rich variety of light and color to capture on canvas. Stroke by stroke, Davis shows them how to layer the subtle washes of paint.
Third-year graduate student Matthew Gauldin primarily worked on detailed pen drawings throughout the class. But today, he tried his hand at watercolor at Davis’ easel.
“You’re experiencing a lot more senses. You’re getting the smells and sounds, and the way the light changes,” Gauldin says of the marsh landscape. “It helps you get more of the detail you’d miss if you were drawing from a picture. Out here, it’s dynamic.”
Undergraduate Miles Miccichi works on a sketch as he sits on a wall in the garden of the Crane Cottage in Jekyll Island’s historic district.
Professor Brad Davis, middle, points out features of the local flora near the Elder Mill Covered Bridge in Watkinsville, Georgia, while teaching students in his field drawing and watercolor course.
An overhead detail of smaller watercolor paintings of the Faith Chapel by graduate student Caitlyn Hentenaar in Jekyll Island’s historic district.
(L-R) Loren O’Steen talks with Professor Brad Davis along with JH Leigh, Matthew Gauldin and Abigail Ramos as they have a class lunch in Davis’ home in Oconee County, Georgia.
(L-R) Undergraduates Miles Miccichi and Benjamin Miller along with Professor Brad Davis paint with light from their phones in the moonlight before sunrise on Jekyll Island’s Driftwood Beach.
(L-R) Graduate students Robert Boham and Samantha Harper use a viewfinder to guide the perspective, scale and proportion of their sketches in downtown Athens.