October 8-15, 2025
Join artists Jennifer Orkin Lewis (August Wren) and Gayle Kabaker on a life-changing sketchbook retreat on the island of Zakynthos, Greece. Learn to find your authentic creative voice and develop or improve a sketchbook practice to document your adventures and daily life. Discover your ability to find joy and beauty in what you see around you. Be inspired and interpret what you see in your own way, and learn to become focused and present (with no judgement!) on the joy of this process.
Together with Gayle and Jennifer, you'll cover topics such as:
Introduction to acrylic gouache
How to layout a sketchbook page - various methods and ideas
Color exploration - learn how to mix colors and find color palettes that you love
How to let your creativity wander and not pick at details
Creating expressive artwork from reference photos
Depicting amazing landscapes or painting the subtle details of still life
Lessons based on specific desires from the group, such as painting faces and figures, painting water, and painting on a dark background
...and so much more!
Casa Grande, the venue, a stunning Greek villa perched on a cliff with sweeping views of the sea, will be your creative haven. The property offers exclusive access to a sea-facing studio, welcoming common areas, and a refreshing infinity pool, providing plenty of space to work and relax.
daily schedule
DAY 1 • Short description of day schedule
This one could include more of a sentence structuire if you wanted this option.
DAY 2 • Short description of day schedule
This one could include more of a sentence structuire if you wanted this option.
Instructors
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Illustrator, Writer, Visual storyteller
Gayle Kabaker is an award-winning illustrator, writer, and visual storyteller. She graduated from the Academy of Art in San Francisco and began her career as a freelance fashion illustrator.
After moving to Western Massachusetts, she expanded from fashion illustration and this led to projects for a variety of major clients in advertising, editorial, and animation. She had her first New Yorker magazine cover ‘June Brides’ celebrating gay marriage in 2012 and has had a total of six covers since then.
Gayle does many private commissions and painted over 100 portraits of women for the book Vital Voices: 100 women Using their Power to Empower. Her work tends to be very feminine, exploring beauty in all forms.
Traveling to paint and draw is a big part of Gayle's life, and she uses her sketchbook to document her life. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband, artist Peter Kitchell, and their dog Charlie.
“For many years I took a sketchbook on vacations and never used it. It felt too much like ‘work’. But about seven years ago, on my first yoga retreat in Costa Rica, I had a major breakthrough with my sketchbook. I shifted from ‘I should be drawing in my sketchbook’ to ‘I GET to draw in my sketchbook!’ One of the main keys to this was letting go of caring what my drawings or paintings looked like. I was simply trying to document what I saw in a loose, fun way,” Gayle said.
Visit Gayle's website and follow her on Instagram.Description text goes here
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Artist, Illustrator, Author, Teacher
A deep love of color, pattern and nature are the foundation of Jennifer's work as an artist, illustrator, author, and teacher. Her joyful gouache paintings of flowers, random objects, people and occasional meditative abstract musings open a colorful and enticing window onto a detail of the day one might ordinarily overlook.
Ten years ago, she made the move to switch careers from textile design to illustration, to fulfill a long held goal, and began a rigorous daily sketchbook project, doing a 30 minute painting every day. The looseness and intuitiveness of those paintings became her signature style and they are the source of much inspiration to herself and others. She is endlessly amazed and satisfied to see her shelf filling up with completed sketchbooks.
Jennifer's work has been featured on many products and brands worldwide, including Anthropologie, Abrams Books, Chronicle Books, Eeboo, Kate Spade Home, Tocca, Seattle Chocolate Company, Roger LaBorde, as well as many others. Her books include two inspirational sketchbook journals published by Abrams that encourage and inspire people to develop their own daily drawing practice. She also wrote a book called All Hail the Queen with Chronicle books, which empowers girls and women through informative and fun illustrations of powerful woman monarchs throughout history.
Asked how she started using a sketchbook, Jennifer said: "In 2014 I started a daily painting project in my sketchbook. I painted whatever inspired me that day for 30 minutes or less and soon realized how special it was to have this creative space to put down my thoughts. The sketchbook is an important place to explore, play, learn and grow. I learned that the process of doing it every day and building up thousands of sketchbook explorations over the years has been invaluable in my growth as an artist."
Visit Jennifer's website and follow her on Instagram.Description text goes here
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Holistic Guide
My earliest memory of being "awake" was around 3 years old. I became very aware of hearing sounds and voices from things I couldn't see. At first, it was static noise, but as I grew older, I began to understand the voices more, though I didn’t know what or who was connecting with me. As the years passed, I began to see things too – orbs, colours, lights, faces, people. As my husband likes to say, yes, I see dead people. But I prefer to think of them as souls.
In my late teens, I took my first Reiki degree, quickly followed by Reiki 2, which opened the doors of awareness even wider. But it wasn’t until I suffered a serious back injury while snowboarding that my journey into energetic healing truly began. Pushed in a wheelchair to a Mind, Body, and Spirit fair, I asked a spiritual healer for help with my back. He smiled at me and said, "You don’t need me to heal you—you can heal yourself."
From that moment, things started to fall into place. I began studying spiritual healing and took a 200-hour course. At the same time, I pursued a degree in Criminal Psychology, and during a voluntary session in a prison, I realised my true calling was teaching, not analysing behaviour. After university, I spent years traveling and getting qualified to teach Pilates, skiing, snowboarding, fitness, and Reiki—eventually finding yoga.
When I completed my 200-hour yoga teacher training, my world finally clicked. I found something that combined my love for teaching with my deep connection to spirituality and energy work. This led me to start my own wellness festival, running retreats, and ultimately move to Portugal, where my spiritual journey deepened even further. Through new friends and spirit guides, I was drawn into the ancient wisdom of Shamanic healing.
Now, the wellness and holistic practices I share in my retreats, courses, and one-on-one sessions combine everything I’ve learned—and am still learning—with the goal of supporting you on your journey to your soul, unlocking the magic that’s eternally within you.