Illustrating Australian Reptiles with Zoe Lawrence (NEW!)

Create a beautiful coloured pencil illustration of an Australian reptile with professional illustrator Zoe Lawrence from North Queensland. 

Dates: 29 - 30 November 2025

Day/Times: Saturday/Sunday 9.30am - 4.30pm

Studio: NatureArt Lab, M16 Artspace, 21 Blaxland Crescent, Griffith

About the course/workshop
Reptiles are iconic to Australia, our snakes and lizards are often misunderstood or overlooked. This course will give you an opportunity to look closely at reptiles, understanding their distinct features and learn techniques used to accurately capture them through coloured pencil illustrations.

Study live reptiles and focus on particular reptilian features such as anatomy, locomotion and natural behaviours. In addition, you will develop your pencil and coloured pencil techniques with exercises based around accurately representing reptiles. 

Illustrating reptiles is a fantastic way to use the medium of art to promote awareness of these beautiful species and encourage a love for our native fauna! 

Learning Outcomes 

• Knowledge of materials and equipment used with sketching and documenting species. 

• Knowledge of pencil and coloured pencil rendering techniques.

• Understanding how to illustrate various textures/features of reptiles with a focus on scales. 

• Understanding the importance of live observations when creating an accurate natural history illustration. 

• Demonstrated understanding of how to approach and develop a finalised illustration of a reptile species with accuracy of species behaviour and habitat.  

About the tutor
Zoe Lawrence is an established natural history illustrator and artist based in North Queensland. She has a passion for illustrating all aspects of the natural world but with a particular love for native Australian fauna. Throughout her years studying Natural History Illustration at the University of Newcastle Zoe worked on many projects from animations for music videos, private commissions, logo designs and being published in Australian Geographic. After graduating Zoe worked with wildlife at Australia Zoo, and is now working fulltime with bushland regeneration.

As an artist Zoe believes it is important to properly observe and have a thorough understanding of a particular species to accurately portray it’s true beauty and charisma with artworks. Zoe works with a range of medium from pencil, coloured pencil, watercolour, acrylic and digital illustration.

Special Invitation: Snakes Alive Exhibition, 12 - 18 January 2026

Participants are invited to exhibit their final illustrations at 'Snakes Alive', 12 - 18 January 2026, Australian National Botanic Gardens. This event attracts thousands of visitors each year, and is an opportunity to showcase and sell your artwork with an audience that is interested in reptiles.  

Artworks will also be featured in the ACTHA newsletter, to share the outcomes of this generous sponsorship. 

This workshop is kindly sponsored by ACT Herpetology Association (ACTHA), enabling us to offer this workshop at a reduced price.