Unlock Your Own Unique Artistic Style and Voice
The world needs
creative minds,
rooted in curiosity,
with clear, expressive voices,
connected to purpose,
who trust, deeply,
what they know, feel and see.
I’m frequently asked about my creative process.
How do you develop your artistic style and literary voice?
Where do ideas come from and how do you shape them?
How do you know if it’s original and authentic?
How do you activate your creative life?
Where do you start?
The Jane & Orma workshops
are my response to these questions
Two grandmas. Two personalities.
Two workshops. Two modalities.
In these two self-guided workshops, I share the many ways in which my journal and sketchbook practice serve as a creative root system for my work as a storyteller, painter, and creator.
Two workshops, one for writing and one for painting. Go at your own pace. Skim the surface or dive deep. Grandma Jane and Grandma Orma are here to welcome you home to yourself.
What are the Jane & Orma Workshops?
full permission to claim agency over your own creative vision
an accessible-no-pressure-get-messy-have-fun experience
a roadmap for authentic self-discovery and playful expression
a fun and dynamic tool for building an experiential catalogue of compelling images and stories on which to grow your own creative work.
Meet Jane & Orma
Each of my grandmothers gave me a beautiful introduction to living a creative life and showed me how to develop my own creative identity. They modeled a manner of noticing and a mode of expression that I carry into my work as a professional artist everyday.
While they imparted their creative legacy in wildly different ways that befitted their opposite personalities, both Jane and Orma did three key things to orient my emergence as a writer and painter:
They recognized my desire, advocated on behalf of my talent at a young age (8-9 years old), and treated my creativity as a serious skill to be cultivated.
They exposed me to a diversity of art and experiences as a way to nourish my creative capacity and strengthen my powers of observation.
They empowered me, through their attention and compassionate questioning, to claim what I thought and felt about myself and my world (however poetic and nonlinear) by expressing it with clarity and intention.
Their creative legacy lives through me and now, with these workshops, you are a part of that lineage. We all deserve grandmother energy in our life — an elder who is rooting for us, and providing generous resources for our own artistic emergence. Jane and Orma imparted to me the benefit and fluidity of their two different ways of being, seeing, doing, and expressing. And they would have loved this offering.
Grandma Orma Said Paint
You have a vision that only you can bring into being. Unlock and uplift your unique way of perceiving the world.
Orma Cochran Minshull was a watercolorist and keeper of sketchbooks. She married at 18 and had five children by her 26th birthday. Quiet and reserved, she was an astute observer of life and reveled in nature’s wonders. I loved visiting her attic art studio where she’d set me up with a blank sheet of paper. “Draw what you notice and notice what you draw,” were her only instructions.
Grandma Jane Said Write
You have a story to tell and now is the time to tell it. Unearth and strengthen your authentic voice and start writing.
Jane Bentley Lambie was an educator, traveler, costume designer, and avid diarist. Gregarious and funny, she married late in life after establishing a career as an English teacher and gymnastics coach. When I was 12-years-old, she gave me a fabric-covered journal and told me that good writers keep a journal. “Write about all you do, see, think, and feel”, were the words she wrote inside my first journal.
What better gift to give yourself or a young person in your life, than the tools and confidence for joyful, original creative expression, rooted in purpose?
(((VIDEO TRAILER RIGHT HERE?)))
Calling upon my 30-plus years as keeper of journals and sketchbooks, I demystify the creative process and give you tangible tools to begin right now, where you are. No preparation necessary.
We’ll write, sketch, copy, collage, paint, paste, and play our way through our own narratives.
Who is this for?
curious lovers of life who aren’t sure if they are creative
emerging creatives with experience or none at all
established creatives who are seeking inspiration and lift-off
young people just begining to create their own identities
homeschoolers seeking fun, dynamic educational materials for their 6th-12th grader
adults who are craving a sense of “home” in their own creativity
retireees reimagining how they’ll inhabit this new phase of life
anyone who ever wanted a loving grandmother to guide and advocate for them
What’s included?
These are workshops to go, downloadable right now, self-guided, and require no prior experience. Each workshop touches on lots of learning styles and includes the following:
a welcoming and accesible 8-minute video introduction to the workshop.
two 20-minute deep-dive videos where we walk through the workbook. Both workshops follow this same outline:
Part 1: Manner of Noticing — technique, truth, and transformation
Part 2: Mode of Expression — technique, truth, and transformation
a beautiful printable 40-page workbook (PDF) ((SAMPLE PAGES?))
How much time does it take?
These are self-guided workshops and can be experienced in short sections. Most folks will spend at about three hours in direct contact with the workshop materials. Of course, the beauty of this offering is that you can pace yourself and return to any part of the workbook or video again and again.
The accessible prompts and exercises are designed for re-use and re-visiting. They are playful, evocotive pathways that allow you to uncover and reveal your literary voice (JANE workshop) and your unique artistic style (ORMA workshop).
This isn’t about fitting a creative practice into your life, this is about waking up to the reality that your living is a creative act. Knowing what you feel and think about your own life is going to change you. The workshops are short. The impact is long.
What Supplies Will I need?
Supplies for each workshop will be discussed in the introductory videos. But generally speaking, here are the items you’ll need to participate:
GRANDMA ORMA SAID PAINT
pencil and ink pen
sketchbook
watercolors and/or acrylic paints
paintbrushes in 2-3 sizes
GRANDMA JANE SAID WRITE
pencil and ink pen
journal
glue stick
scissors
About Your Guide
Hi, I’m Sarah Greenman — painter, playwright, storyteller, and teacher. My core belief is that creativity is a gift, meant to be wielded with great love and joy. It is a bone-deep tool for healing, justice, and revelatory collective liberation. I’m so excited to share my grandmothers with you through these workshops . Want to know more about me and my work? Visit my ABOUT page. Have questions? Feel free to CONTACT me.