I began my teaching practice with science museums, at the California Academy of Sciences, the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and in Vermont at the Montshire and Fairbanks Museums. I've taught online, in person, and outdoors for nature centers, including North Branch Nature Center and Birds of Vermont Museum, for arts organizations, including Across Roads Center for the Arts and The Current, and I've been hosted at numerous public schools around Vermont as a resident artist. I recently spent a year as the art teacher for the Next School, a project-based high school in Derry, New Hampshire.
I regularly teach online for the Harvard Museum of Natural History, their education page is here. I'm on the Vermont Arts Council's Teaching Artist roster and have staffed Project Design Lab, a teacher professional development course run by the Community Engagement Lab. You can read more about my past experience here: Creative Ground profile.
Curricula
Listed below are my most popular workshops. I’ve taught many of these in classroom, outdoor, and online settings to students of many ages. I prefer to tailor project plans and content to the interests of students, so I also enjoy creating brand new experiences.
Please email me if you would like to discuss a teaching project!:
"I took Rachel’s Introductory Nature Drawing class online during COVID, not quite sure what to expect or how well art could be taught virtually. To my delight, Rachel exceeded every expectation. Her teaching approach was thoughtful, engaging, and remarkably clear. She guided us step by step through techniques that deepened our observation skills and helped us truly connect with our natural subjects — from butterflies and mushrooms to birds.
Rachel introduced us to the fundamentals of composition, form, and structure, encouraging us to see the world with an artist’s eye. Working with colored pencils and watercolor, we explored how light, color, and texture bring life to a drawing. The results were not only surprisingly successful but also deeply rewarding and confidence-building.
Rachel has a gift for nurturing creativity and inspiring a sense of wonder in her students. Her class revealed the artist within each of us and left me with a lasting appreciation for both the creative process and the beauty of the natural world."
Maureen Merrigan, CVU student
Art and Visual Perception
Playing with Color: Exploring how vision shapes our perception of art
Join me for an art-making exploration of some ways our perception of color influences how we make and appreciate art. Using color-focused art projects, we will learn about our own color vision and how our brains process visual information. Along the way, we’ll play with contrasting and equiluminant colors, ultimately coming to better understand how our brains shape our perceptions as artists and art lovers.
3D: Illusions of depth
Have you ever wondered how artists can give a painted landscape depth or make an orange in a still-life look truly spherical? Artists use a familiar set of techniques, such as vanishing points, occlusion, and atmospheric perspective, to communicate depth and dimension that are all based on how our brains interpret visual scenes. In this workshop, we will try these techniques for ourselves while also learning why they work.
Drawing Attention
Our brains and eyes work together to decide what we should pay attention to or ignore. In this class we'll learn about our own attention, how it shapes the way we look at art, and what that means for art makers. Along the way we'll try different art experiments to guide attention around the page.
Implying Motion
Capturing motion on a static page is a fascinating challenge for visual artists. Impressionist painters to modern cartoonists have experimented with strategies to communicate movement, based on how we perceive and interact with a dynamic world. In this workshop we’ll look at some of these examples and experiment with them ourselves through hands-on art activities.
Make Your Own Foraged and Upcycled Art Materials
Painting with Mushrooms
Maybe you’ve foraged, grown, or eaten mushrooms, but have you painted with them too? Many mushrooms and lichens can be used to make inks in a spectrum of earthy colors. Rachel Mirus will demonstrate the ink-making process and introduce some local lichens and mushrooms that produce color, then together we'll experiment with making art from a selection of pre-made mushroom inks. Come try out these unusual materials and see what you can make!
Painting with Insects
For centuries artists looked to natural sources to get their paint, and a few spectacular, and famous, colors are made from insects. Rachel Mirus will introduce some of the fascinating history around these dye sources and lead an ink-making exploration using cochineal. Students will have time to work on an art project prompt, inspired by the history and natural history of these insect dyes.
Painting with Plants
For centuries artists looked to natural sources to get their paint, including from plants. Easy-to-get sources from teas or foods can provide fun colors to extract and experiment with, reminding us of this old artistic tradition. In this workshop we’ll meet a few plant materials that can be used as paint by making our own, then together we'll experiment with making art from our fresh selection of colors.
The Maker’s Palette: upcycled art materials
Before the modern art supply store, artists found and made materials from their everyday lives and immediate environments. In this class, we will channel that same ingenuity by collecting, experimenting, and upcycling our own art materials, including paper, ink, and dip pens, all from everyday ingredients. Come feed your curiosity and creativity by finding color in unexpected sources and experimenting with familiar materials in new ways!
Participants start with an ingredient “treasure hunt” before class and come away with hand-made recycled paper, homemade ink, and experimental dip pens.
Drawing from Nature
Drawing Nature
Close observation can inspire wonderful works of imagination. This course begins with observational drawing, combining careful inquiry with drawing technique to build the keen observation skills foundational for both artists and naturalists. Using example plant and animal groups, we review growth and body patterns, learning through drawing. I introduce field sketching, grayscale and color drawing, and watercolor layer technique. The course culminates with examples and projects in imaginative nature art, launching you into your own nature illustrating journey!
This class was designed for online instruction, but can be adapted for in-person contexts. A pre-recorded version is available through North Branch Nature Center: NBNC Nature Now Online Courses
Drawing Insects and Other Tiny Things
Come explore the miniature world of insects, spiders, and their allies while drawing from nature. In this class, we will use sketching to build our observational skills, starting with beginner-friendly exercises to build careful technique and working up to realistic drawing, all while focusing on the special challenges of capturing arthropods on paper.
I often offer this class on a specific topic, such as understanding caterpillars, or spiders. The informational content changes, but the art techniques are the same.
Drawing the Unseen: combining microscopes and drawing
Bizarre and spectacular creatures hide in plain sight all around us because they are too small to see without magnification. In this class we will go on a micro-safari, hunting down these hidden microorganisms using microscopes and capturing them through observational drawing. After an orientation to the microscopes, Rachel Mirus will introduce some helpful and beginner-friendly drawing techniques for illustrating the tiny things that live in water and soil. Curious about something specific? Participants are welcome to bring their own samples!
Creativity
Drawing on Creativity: Nature Art Beyond Observation
Observing nature has inspired many artistic flights of imagination. This course uses nature study through observational drawing to learn about some familiar animals, from birds to beetles. Using that foundation, we will follow in the footsteps of scientific illustrators and storytellers to invent our own reconstructions of vanished animals like the dinosaurs or our own versions of folk animals like the jackalope. Along the way I cover field sketching, adding color to drawings, watercolor gradients, and more. Learn to fuel your imagination with your love of nature!
This class was designed for online instruction, but can be adapted for in-person contexts. A pre-recorded version is available through North Branch Nature Center: NBNC Nature Now Online Courses
Chimeras, Cryptids, and Creativity
Focusing on drawing in different media, we will investigate the world of imaginary animals and artistic creativity, ultimately designing a personal, never-before-discovered animal. Come find the strange, beautiful, and unexpected creatures hiding in your imagination!
Growing Beauty: how growth in nature creates beautiful shapes
Familiar natural shapes, like spirals or the branching of plants, recur in fascinating and beautiful diversity, and are often the result of simple patterns for growth. We will use observational drawing to explore a few of the many kinds of spirals, branching patterns, and fractals, as well as how and why they grow. Moving on from pure observation, students will finish with a creative project inspired by these natural shapes.
Decorating Animals: how animals get their spots and stripes
Many animal bodies are adorned with spots and stripes, patterns that look different but are mathematically linked. Starting with simple observational drawing strategies, we will explore these patterns and how they are created. Moving on from pure observation, students will finish with a creative project inspired by these animal decorations.