Margaret Saylor
Margaret Saylor
Classes & Workshops
Small-group classes in botanical drawing and painting, offered online and at regional art centers and gardens. The focus is on close observation, sound technique, and building a studio practice that lasts.
Upcoming sessions are listed below by venue; follow each link to register directly with the host organization.
HISTORIC YELLOW SPRINGS • CHESTER SPRINGS, PA
Medicinal Botanicals: The Living Specimens
Part 2 • Saturday, August 29, 2026 • 10:00 AM-3:00 PM • On site
In the winter session, participants drew from two-hundred-year-old copper engravings — the plants as Sowerby saw them, translated through a burin, a press, and an unknown hand's watercolor brush. Now the same plants have grown back into the world, and they are waiting for you.
In this second session, you'll work directly from live medicinal plant specimens: roots, stems, leaves, and flowers observed in real light, real time, and real dimension. Where historical plates offer elegant distillation, the living plant gives you the delicious complication of imperfection — the leaf that curls, the flower that leans, the stem that refuses the composition you planned.
If you joined us in February, bring the sketchbook you've already started. If this is your first time, bring your curiosity and a willingness to really look. Either way, you're in exactly the right place.
TOUCHSTONE CENTER FOR CRAFTS • FARMINGTON, PA
Understory Alphabetica: Woodland Curiosities
Saturday & Sunday September 12-13, 2026 · 9:00 AM–5:00 PM · On site
Step into the vibrant September woodlands of Western Pennsylvania for a two-day workshop, “Understory Alphabetica: Woodland Curiosities.” Discover mushrooms, fungi, mosses, and forest floor plants as you create an A–Z sketchbook, each page dedicated to a different woodland subject selected by its common name. Mornings feature guided forest walks for live observation and sketching; afternoons provide focused studio time and hands-on demonstrations in graphite, Micron pen, and watercolor. The course blends field and studio practice, teaching skills in scientific journaling, composition, and storytelling through botanical art. Welcoming both beginners and experienced artists, the workshop encourages curiosity and careful observation to deepen each participant’s connection to the changing woodland understory.
MT CUBA CENTER • HOCKESSIN, DE
The Mushroom Forager's Sketchbook
Friday September 25, 2026 · 10:00 AM–3:00PM · On site
Most people walk right past them. A hen of the woods erupting from an oak root. A cluster of honeys colonizing a stump. A chanterelle tucked under leaf litter, glowing like a coal. This workshop is about learning to look, to see, to draw.
September is the moment — the woodland floor at its most generous, brackets and boletes and chicken-of-the-woods each a small architectural event. You photograph it, you jot a note, you wrap it in waxed paper and carry it home. But drawing is how you truly document what you found — a study that required you to look long enough to understand what you were seeing. Cap shape, gill structure, the particular heft of a stipe — these are the things a sketchbook captures and a memory loses.
The morning begins with educator Serah Pesce's guided fungi walk on Mt. Cuba's grounds, where you'll make field notes and quick sketches in the landscape, including a short exercise drawing mushrooms within their habitat. Studio drawing follows, using wild and cultivated specimens sourced by Serah and Margaret — fresh material you can handle, compare, and observe at your own pace.
You'll leave with a completed sketchbook spread, a practiced eye for fungal form, and skills you can bring back to the field on every future foray.
All skill levels welcome. Some drawing experience is helpful but not required. A materials list will be provided upon registration.
wayne art center • wayne, PA
Peak Season: An Autumn Botanical Field Journal
Saturday, September 26, 2026 · 10:00 AM–1:00 PM · On site
Late September is the year's most generous moment for the sketchbook artist. Leaves are at the height of their color, seed heads are heavy and ripe, berries glow against darkening stems, and the first hints of bare branch architecture are just beginning to show. The landscape is abundant, specific, and fleeting — exactly the conditions a field journal was made for.
In this hands-on workshop, you will build a field journal page dedicated to autumn's peak, working in graphite, Micron pen, and watercolor. Learn to observe the colors, textures, and forms of the season with fresh attention, and develop techniques for recording botanical subjects at their most expressive moment. Leave with a richly worked spread and the skills and confidence to continue your field journal practice as the season unfolds around you.
MORRIS ARBORETUM AND GARDENS • PHILADELPHIA, PA
Botanical Illustration Afternoon Retreat: FANTASTIC FUNGI
Saturday, October 10, 2026 · 12:30 - 3 PM · On site
Have you always wanted to practice plant illustration but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you enjoy botanical illustration already, and would love an afternoon carved out in the Morris’ beautiful setting to practice your technique in the presence of a skilled instructor? Join us for this fun and engaging experience designed for botanical artists of all levels—and work at your own pace to discover your own illustration style. Frequent demonstrations will clarify the painting progress. A materials list will be emailed to all participants in advance of the class. This workshop will focus on drawing and painting fungi, combining accurate illustration with the beauty of shape, form and color!
Artist Margaret Saylor creates highly detailed, textural botanical paintings and drawings that capture the essence of a simple object from nature and present it as an exquisite jewel in an ethereal setting. Fungi and mushrooms are her personal specialty!
For a full day of fantastic fungi, please join us earlier in the day for an Off the Beaten Path Mushroom Walk with the Philadelphia Mycology Club (Saturday, October 10, 10:00 am –12:00 pm; separate registration). Sam Bucciarelli, club president, will take us looking for fungi growing behind the scenes of the main garden display!
10:00 am -12:00 pm (mycology walk)
12:30 – 3:00 pm (botanical illustration)
REHOBOTH ART LEAGUE • REHOBOTH BEACH, DE
Understory Alphabetica: Woodland Curiosities
Saturday & Sunday October 17 - 18, 2026 · On site
Understory Alphabetica is an ongoing artist’s book project that documents the forest floor one letter at a time—R for Resinous Polypore, C for Chicken of the Woods. This two-day workshop brings that project to the RAL campus. Participants walk the Henlopen Acres woodland until a specimen earns their attention, research it, then spend two days learning to draw and paint it with Micron pen and watercolor. Day One focuses on observation, research, and ink mark-making; Day Two introduces watercolor as a tool for describing form. Participants leave with one finished naturalist’s spread and the method to continue the book independently. All 26 letters are waiting.
wayne art center • wayne, PA
Fruits of the Forest: A Forager’s Sketchbook
Saturday, October 24, 2026 · 10:00 AM–4:00 PM · On site
Autumn is prime season for fungi, and the woodland floor has never been more interesting. Turkey tails bracket a mossy log. A cluster of honey mushrooms erupts from a stump. A sweet gum ball, a dried fern, a scatter of acorns — the supporting cast is as compelling as the main event. This is the world a forager's sketchbook was made to document.
In this full-day workshop, you will build a richly annotated sketchbook spread dedicated to the fungi and flora of the autumn woodland, working in graphite, Micron pen, and watercolor. In the days before class, forage your neighborhood, yard, or a local park for anything that catches your eye — mushrooms, seed pods, leaves, lichen, whatever the season offers — and bring your finds to work from directly. A variety of specimens will also be provided. Learn to observe the distinctive shapes, textures, and tones of mushrooms and their habitat with an artist's eye, and develop techniques for capturing everything from the velvet surface of a cap to the delicate architecture of gills, pores, and stems.
No foraging experience required — just curiosity and a willingness to look closely. All skill levels welcome. A materials list will be provided upon registration.