Finding Nature’s Treasures: the adventures of a young naturalist.

‘I love nature and drawing. Nature is the most amazing thing to learn about, and we have to look after nature and not harm it. All of the plants and animals and humans are connected, and we can’t survive without each other.’

I’m writing this for my little boy, Benji, who is seven years old. Benji calls himself Benjamin Fallow (though it’s not his real name) after Fallow Deer, as deer are his favourite animals. We live in a village in Sussex, in the south of England, and have been here all of Benji’s life. I’ve only just learned to drive, and work in the village, so for Benji’s very early years we’ve walked everywhere around the village and the woodlands and fields beyond. Benji would already walk a couple of miles at 2 or 3 years old, and notices everything along the way. He draws all the time and loves to draw out in the countryside - he’s been carrying paper and pens in his backpack since he was three!

Benji collects nature treasures and has taught his dad and I, and our family and friends, so much more about nature than we ever knew before! He hasn’t had art lessons, but at his old school he used to teach groups of children how to draw animals, and has taught more art than he has been taught. He loves learning facts about nature and learning as much as he can about animals, insects and plants, and collects so many treasures that parts of our house are turning into a nature museum : ) Benji knows exactly what each of these treasures is, and the story behind each one.

Like so many children, he’s always loved drawing, painting and making things. And from a very young age he especially loved started drawing and painting from nature. When he was 2 (and a half) Benji drew this view from the top of Woolstonbury Hill, a beautiful point in the South Downs, at sunset. Benji said that he had drawn the trees small as they are far away, and next to them are their shadows! I was amazed at the colours and this idea of perspective, as no one had ever told him about that concept. I love the way that the shadows of the trees fall, all in the right direction, cast by the sunset.

Aged 3, Benji found this guinea fowl feather while playing in a local farmyard with some friends. He drew this feather the next morning, sitting at the kitchen table as I was making breakfast. I couldn’t believe it when I saw what he had made.  It was the first time he copied from life so accurately, and I love the fact that he drew the fuzzy bits and imperfections.

When he was 4, Benji drew hundreds of pictures of animals, insects and dinosaurs!

He carried this drawing around for about 3 weeks, adding a butterfly each time he saw one. So these butterflies are all copied from life: Cabbage White, Peacock, Brimstone, Orange Tip, Common Blue, and others.

His love of nature and drawing has just grown over the years. Now, Benji also uses photographs, books, looks at other artist’s work and often researches several sources before drawing an animal. He studies the details of each animal and thinks carefully about each piece. This peregrine falcon that Benji drew age 6 is one of my favourites, and he used several sources as references. But Benjamin always comes back to drawing from nature, and is never happier than when out in nature with his sketchbook, preferably also covered in mud (Benji, not the sketchbook : ) ) 

Drawing and nature have been the constant through some quite turbulent years in many ways. We’ve been through bereavements, job loss, illnesses and changes of school.

The year before the pandemic, Benji was seriously ill, and in hospital with pneumonia leading to a collapse in both his lungs. It took a further six months to get his lungs functioning fully again, so we were already on our own lockdown for much of 2019. With his health history, the doctor advised us to shield during the first lockdown, and finding ourselves all at home together, it was nature and drawing that came to the rescue again!

 Benji really had time to spend on his drawings during lockdown, and it was lovely to have time to let him just enjoy the process, and not have to rush anywhere. We went on long walks each day, and every day some treasure or sight in nature would be Benji’s ‘Nature Gift of the Day.’

 ‘Did you know butterflies have hearts in their wings to pump blood and control their temperature?! They have three hearts!’

‘It’s a Small Tortoiseshell! (that’s my favourite butterfly EVER!). When you see a butterfly you love you can get endorphins, and this makes you so happy that you’re full of energy!!!’

This butterfly made Benji so happy that he ran miles and miles, right up to the top of the South Downs!

‘It’s a barn owl feather! It’s my nature treasure for the day!’ It was a small flight feather, in perfect condition. 

‘Can you hear it?’ Benji flapped it up and down past my ear.

‘That’s how you tell if it’s an owl’s feather, ‘cause they’re silent in flight, such an incredible find!’

‘People used to be scared of barn owls because they fly completely silently, and have such a piercing screech! But I think they bring good luck, they’re so beautiful and their hearing is incredible!’ Benji was explaining it all to me on our walk by the barn owl tree.

‘The shape of their face reflects sound to their ear openings! The barn owls left ear is higher up on its head than its right ear. The Medulla is the bit of their brain that understands hearing, it’s the biggest of any creature because they hear so well!’ 

Every time we pass this tree Benji searches the ground hoping for a feather! He found this barn owl feather in lockdown 1 and drew this, copying from life. The feather is about 12cm long and Benji’s drawing is life size. He used his feather to try to get the details on his barn owl painting absolutely right.

I’ve never had any kind of social media before, but I started sharing Benji’s artwork and nature discoveries during lockdown, and we were able to connect with so many passionate naturalists and artists from around the world. That’s where we met the wonderful Jules and Bethan; and the nature journaling community!

Benji has started making his notes about nature and his drawings into big nature journal pages. We collect together his drawings, and the notes he makes out in the field, which he edits, and makes a collage of these onto A3 sheets so that Benji can remember his gifts from nature this way. These are a couple of his recent pages.

Benji was so excited to be included in Bethan, Journaling from Nature’s, wonderful ‘round the world sketchbook’.

We’ve so appreciated having a garden of our own during this time, and Benji has been turning our little garden into a wildlife haven! He made his own wildlife pond out of an old washing up bowl, a bug area, a bed of pollinators, and a meadow, collecting seeds and planting them, and has been learning to take cuttings grow his own vegetables. He loves drawing flowers and is possibly even more obsessed with the details of flowers and plants than he is of animals now!

 It’s been so special to have that time walking together, and to feel free to roam further and further afield. We recently made it all the way from our village to grandma’s house, nearly 20km in one day, and Benji’s longest ever walk! We’re planning to walk the South Down’s Way this summer, over 100 miles along the hills near here, which I’m sure will lead to lots more nature journaling along the way!

7-year-old Benjamin Fallow is a young artist and naturalist. He draws and paints from nature and loves studying the details and learning facts about each species.

During lockdown 2020, Benjamin won a national nature writing competition for his age group, Nature on your Doorstep with Lucy McRobert, his story was published in BBC Wildlife Magazine. His artwork has been featured on Chris Packham’s Self Isolating Bird Club, by The Wildlife Trusts, the Natural History Museum, RSPB, Greenpeace UK, and received amazing encouragement from Sir David Attenborough! 

If he’s not drawing, Benji’s usually out with his binoculars, or covered in mud : ) Most of all, he is passionate about protecting nature and wildlife, and wants to use his artwork to encourage people to look after nature.

You can find Benji’s work online @benjaminfallow

https://instagram.com/benjaminfallow/

https://twitter.com/benjaminfallow/

Field sketching in your pyjamas

Hi, I'm Liane Tancock and I am an illustrator living and working in Bristol, UK.

I have always loved animals and birds, my illustrations revolve around them. One of the most important things I do is sketch live animals. Every week I go to my local zoo and sketch. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now and I have seen my work get stronger and I have grown in confidence.

However with Covid everything changed and I had to adapt.

Sketching animals at the zoo has been the most important part of my practice that has pushed and developed my work. It was so important that I did not want lose it. I had always sketched from live cams but now with the changes in our lives I had to turn to them as a replacement for the zoos which were now closed. Sketching from live cams gives me the opportunity to draw and see animals that I may never see in the flesh, in places of the world, where, in reality I may never go.

I can sketch any time of the day or night...while wearing pyjamas.

Sketching live animals is unpredictable, but that’s the joy. You need to let go and not aim for perfection. I’m not aiming for polished finished pieces, instead I aim for a sense of character. I start knowing that some sketches will work and some will fail but that’s ok. I try and draw the gesture, the action and the feeling of it. If the animal is stretching, where in the body is it stretching? Where it is placing its weight?

At first the thought of sketching an animal that could move at any second was frightening, kind of like drawing without a safety net. But the more you do it the easier it becomes. That’s what makes drawing from moving animals so important, it’s not a static photograph, it’s a 3 dimensional animal moving in a space.

There are so many benefits of this type of sketching. You increase your visual library, sketching live animals gives you a better connection and understanding of the birds and animals, and your drawing and observational skills will improve. There are so many stories and characters that appear watching the live cams. These wild places you can watch on the cams can be your window into new worlds and new challenges.

I try and keep the materials I use simple, just a sketchbook and biro, fineliner or a black pencil. I occasionally go back and add colour, but it’s always the work I’ve done with the line that’s most important to me. It doesn’t matter if it’s done on the back of an envelope, it’s the act of doing it that’s important.

I urge you all to give it a go, find the stories and characters happening on these cams.

Grab a biro and a bit of paper and let go and play.

Here is a link to Explore, a wonderful site with live cams across the world.

I was born in Bristol, UK and have a BA (HONS) fine art degree from UWIC, Cardiff. I can most often be found in my own world, where Bears sail pedalos and Wolverines shout at Butterflies. It’s just to the right of one hundred acre wood but 5 miles short of Narnia. See you all there.

Instagram @lianetancockillustration

Facebook Liane Tancock Artist

‘Drawn Walks’ and Nature Journaling

I have written a diary for many years, and as someone who enjoys making art and other creative activities I embraced the idea in Julia Cameron’s book ‘The Artist’s Way’ of writing every day. However the diaries were building up. Where to store them? Whether to re-read them? Although not as cringeworthy as my teenage diaries, and considerably less amusing, I rarely do look back on them, other than to check when certain events took place. They are not of the confessional variety but I certainly would not wish them to be shared after my demise!

More recently however, I abandoned writing a conventional diary and started keeping a visual diary, mostly when away on holiday. And since discovering the online Nature Journal communities, these have gradually morphed into my nature journal. A nature journal tends to be outward looking rather than introspective and to my mind is good for the soul. These are pages that I look back on regularly; happy mementos of time spent outdoors, and I enjoy sharing them with friends and even strangers, such as yourselves!

I did my first drawn maps while on holiday; away with just my other half or in the company of friends. When you are out on a walk with others you can pause to take a quick photo, but patience runs thin if a member of the party stops to sketch each botanical find, so my journaling time needed to be after the day’s activities. I found this to be a really enjoyable and relaxing way of revisiting the day’s events. If we had been for a walk I would sum up the day with a simple illustrated map. A potentially antisocial activity became more communal once my friends knew what I was doing. Unless it was my turn to cook, the days would end in companionable discussions of the events and nature finds of the day, with perhaps a pre-prandial glass of wine to hand, sketching and revisiting the highlights of the walk. At the end of the holiday I could then share the memories of the trip through photos of my pages. I have quite a poor memory so these sketches are great reminders of good times shared.

During lockdown, nature journaling has become a more solitary activity and I value the time I have to spend on focussed and solitary sketching when out and about, or back home at the kitchen table.

On a few occasions I have been able to make a drawn walk ‘on the hoof’ when on my own, stopping to sketch and make notes en route. This requires a leisurely approach and clement weather with nothing to hurry home for. I always have my sketching kit at the ready and take it with me on my regular solitary walks, but more often than not the sketchbook stays in the bag. This has been especially so over the last winter. Cold, rain, snow and wind have all conspired against the notion of sitting drawing nature in that idyllic contemplative state that the research tells us is so good for us. And here in the British Isles, even the summer months do not bring so very many days that lend themselves to perfect ‘plein air’ conditions!

The drawn walk is one way of recording your outdoor experiences, whether drawing from memory, from photo references or from items that you have brought home; or maybe a combination of all three. It gives context to your finds and observations. Walks that you do regularly can show changes over the seasons. A mini landscape can suggest the location, with the option of rectangular or circular frames to indicate where highlights were observed. Some nature journalers use a concertina page for a long linear walk.

I don’t usually aim for scale or accuracy, more a rough sense of where I have been and more often than not there is not room on the page to squeeze in all the things I have seen, in which case just a written note or a symbol can serve as a reminder. When space permits I now also use Rosanne Hanson’s method of noting metadata related to weather conditions. and location. If you are keen to create a more accurate map, or your mind map lets you down, as in the case of our latest walk, a screenshot of an online map can be handy. You can even use gridlines to help with accuracy, although this approach can lead to a less spontaneous result.

My favoured method is to rough out the map and main items lightly in pencil, and then complete the details in ink. I use carbon ink in a Platinum refillable pen. Once dry I can then rub out the pencil and add loose watercolour.

I am very fortunate to live in a place with countryside on my doorstep. Walks either alone, with my other half and occasionally with friends have helped to keep us positive and have provided material for my journal during lockdown. My elderly mother has not been able to go out much and the journal has been a way to bring the outdoors to her. The sketched walks are my solace and will serve as reminders of these very strange times that we are all sharing.

I am a retired teacher, currently studying for my M.A. in Design at Sunderland University. I have used my nature journal practice as a foundation for my design projects.

You can find me on Instagram @flatcapsandfrappuccinos

Nature journaling when nature is wounded

I'm fairly new to nature journaling and I love it as a celebration of the life forms we share the world with. But I’m also curious to explore nature journaling as a "celebration of life" in the other sense of the phrase: how can we use our journals to explore grief when we lose cherished pieces of nature? 

Marley Peifer inspired this idea when he visited his childhood nature patch on a recent episode of The Nature Journal Show.  If I did that I'd find a subdivision of homes where there were once fields and hedgerows full of the birds, small mammals, and insects that sparked a little girl's curiosity and wonder.  Marley suggested using nature journaling to reflect on those changes.

When I’m not nature journaling (or thinking about nature journaling, or exploring nature journal resources) I work as a conservation biologist.  To be honest, it can be discouraging sometimes.  Bearing witness to bad news for nature is a daily job hazard that can lead to ecological grief.

So, I gave Marley's suggestion a try at my current beloved nature patch.  It's a remnant of majestic old-growth forest right in the middle of town. Sketching little portraits of its huge trees is a source of solace for me.  I’m so grateful that the town is taking good care of this treasure.  Sadly, at the edge of this forest younger trees have been cleared (for a subdivision of new homes, of course).

Every time I pass these cut trees I'm sad .  But I'm also intrigued by their interesting patterns.  I think they look like big abstract flowers - they remind me of the flowered wallpaper and fabrics my grandparents had in the 1970s.

I spent some time in silence with these trees, noticing their individual shapes and wondering about their lives.   It felt like a simple and appropriate way to honour them.  Now when I see them I feel something more than just helpless sadness - I feel like I did something to appreciate them.

While I much prefer to celebrate the joyful aspects of nature in my journal, there's a role for acknowledging the difficult things, too.  I'm not alone: I noticed this month that people have been posting their pages of sick or injured songbirds in the Nature Journal Club group.  And in one of Marley's recent live interviews there was an interesting discussion of the role of nature journaling as a tribute to biodiversity, even as we observe its loss.

Using art to express feelings about human impacts on nature certainly isn't a new idea.  Artist Emily Carr created powerful paintings of logging in British Columbia, Canada over 80 years ago.  I use a "regular" journal to cope with the grief of losing a loved one.  So it makes sense that nature journaling is a helpful practice when I’m feeling a little down about the state of things.  

“Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer

These words from Robin Wall Kimmerer inspire me and my nature journal practice.  Spending a few moments of time on these sketches and notes is a tiny, personal gift that I can offer to myself, and to nature.

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About the Author - Coco Brdar

Hi nature journalers!  I discovered this inspiring community through the 2020 Wild Wonder conference and the Journaling with Nature Podcast and have been completely hooked ever since. I live on the shore of Lake Ontario, Canada, and I spend as much time as possible outdoors in nature or my garden every day.  I love this practice as a way to appreciate nature, to be truly mindful, and to have fun with creativity.  Here I am at my nature journal patch that's the subject of this blog post.   I also work in the field of conservation ecology as an ecologist (but that's mostly at a computer nowadays). I'm excited about the possibility of sharing this practice with my community and am currently developing some online portals.  In the meantime I've been actively sharing my work on the Nature Journal Club facebook group. 

Why I draw trees

I’ve heard that people find trees intimidating to draw and avoid them as a subject.  For me, it’s not negotiable, I’m drawn to draw them. As the biggest beings on our planet, they are fascinating, endlessly beautiful, and equally as mysterious. It’s obvious that I’m inspired by trees, which is the point. Because if your subject doesn’t call to your heart or move you in some way, I doubt you’ll want to spend the time and effort needed to propel you forward. Developing drawing skills takes practice. And if you’re drawing something you love, it will be a fulfilling journey.

A page from one of my sketchbooks

I enjoy the challenge of figuring out and downright wrestling, with the best way to express the overpowering majesty of a particular tree, for what I call my “tree portraits”.  It’s helpful that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, surrounded by some of the most iconic trees on the planet, including: the Coast Redwood, Coast Live Oak, Valley Oak (and other oaks), Monterey Cypress, California Bay, and charmers like the California Buckeye. In addition we have some spectacular immigrants, such as eucalyptus trees. 

Illustrator Alan Lee, who beautifully conjured up the magical forests of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, wrote that he’s drawn thousands of trees during his long career. At the time I read that I was frustrated at the slow progression of my tree-drawing skills. But his statement reminded me of the effort required to be good at something, so I’ll wait until I’ve drawn at least several hundred to complain about it again! 

A big plus about my tree- obsession is that I get to spend time outside in their company. And if I can be in a park or a natural setting, it’s time well-spent for a lover of nature. Even street trees in urban areas are interesting to draw and observe, especially the older ones that have some story to tell in the twist and turns of their trunks. I’ve even drawn trees while sitting on my portable stool in front of someone’s house in my neighborhood. The more you observe and spend time with trees, the better you’ll come to understand and recall their seasonal patterns of growth, branching characteristics, bark texture, and foliage, which all differ widely among different species. I typically do studies onsite with the intention of working on a finished piece at home, so I take lots of photos. 

But sometimes I draw outside just for the pleasure of it!

My Favorite Portable Art Supplies 

I use a Mabef Plein Air easel for large drawings, and I’ve found that charcoal is a great medium for these studies. In the photo above I was on a cliff above a marine reserve overlooking the Pacific Ocean in a spectacular grove of Monterey Cypress trees.

My portable folding stool, backpack, and the sketchbooks of choice for the day.

Right: My favorite drawing tools- colored pencils, including watercolor pencils, water soluble graphite pencil, Neocolor II soluble wax pastels, charcoal pencil, Blackwing pencils

Backpack: My favorite backpack is one that my husband got at a convention, and it’s really a computerbag (above). It has a couple of compartments for my sketchbooks and drawing tools, plus my folding stool. 

Folding stool: I got this at a camping store. It’s very light and I find it comfortable enough.

Sketchbooks: Like many artists I know, I love sketchbooks and I have an embarrassing number of them that I work in simultaneously.  The size and type of paper is how I choose which ones to bring with me for specific outings. I love soluble media, so I favor thicker papers, either for use with mixed media or watercolor.  I also consider sustainability and I’ll choose recycled paper or alternative products made with bamboo or cotton papers. My finished work tends to be on 100% cotton papers, which is also a good choice for archival reasons.

I favor bound sketchbooks because I love the feeling that it’s in a book form, and since I love to use graphite, it smears less. Just a personal preference! They are also comfortable to hold in my lap while sitting on my stool drawing (I use clips to keep the pages from flipping over).

Drawing tools: Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils, Faber Castell Albrecht Durer water color pencils, Faber Castell Aquarelle graphite (soluble), soluble Caran d’ Ache Neocolor II wax pastels, Blackwing pencils (their motto: “half the pressure, twice the speed!”) they go on silky, and their easers work. And of course, a water brush. 

Working in soluble media has become my favorite method out in the field, it’s fast and I enjoy the process.

Portable easel: Sometimes it’s a great fun to bring along my Mabef Plein Air easel and a masonite drawing board for larger sheets of paper.

My final thoughts about drawing trees is that it requires patience and love. If my tree portraits inspire others to value trees, my hope is that they won’t them for granted and will take better care of them.

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About the Author

“I have deep gratitude for trees- for millennia they have provided us with the resources to maintain Earth as a livable planet. And we humans reap countless benefits from trees in our daily lives, including the very oxygen we breathe, much of the food we eat, and many of the materials we use. Just as important, they awe and inspire us with their profound beauty and grandeur, and feed our souls. Our fate is linked to theirs.” 

Patricia is an exhibiting member of the Northern California Society of Botanical Artists. She studied in the Filoli Botanical Art Certificate Program in Woodside, CA, and this led to her current interest in “tree portraits” as a personal project. She received her B.A. degree in Studio Art from San Jose State University. During the 1990’s she was an exhibiting ceramic artist and a member of the Mountain View Potters studio. 

Patricia is also a horticulturalist and had her own garden design business for the past seven years until the fall of 2020. 

She is a Chilean–American.

Find her on Instagam:  @plarenas_onpaper

How listening to my inner voice led me to my nature journaling journey…

My journey into nature journaling really began when I finally listened to the voice inside that whispered “I want to draw and paint”. I now realize that voice has been with me through out my life.

Little seeds were planted in me along the way … a gift of a paint set from my grandmother when I was 5 or 6 - I remember opening it in wonder, but I don’t remember playing with it - maybe I was told not to make a mess, or maybe I thought it was too precious to use. I have vivid memories of the annual hand drawn Christmas card , sent from a distant Aunt. I would study the ink line image in awe, amazed that someone I was related to, could do such a thing. The third seed I recall, as evidence of this inner voice being ever present, is the deep reaction I would have, whenever I came upon someone standing outdoors, at an easel, painting. Without conscious thought, I always said aloud “I would love to be one of those people someday”. But, with nothing or no one around me saying ‘you can do this,’ I did not.

“Trust my Nudges” - The Universe

Looking back, its so easy to see how these clear memories reflected my soul speaking ~loud and clear …my inner voice was trying to get me to listen. But, as is common for many of us “late bloomers”, it took me until my mid 50’s before my responsibilities, my life experience, and opportunity aligned to a point that, when I became aware of this thing called ‘“nature journaling” in sketchbooks… a spark ignited.

“When the path reveals itself, follow it” - Cheryl Strayed

Once the door opened to this amazing world of nature journaling, I felt like Dorothy must have felt , in the Wizard of OZ, when her house landed and she opened the door to the colorful, fantasy that was Munchkin land. This practice has changed me and my life to such an extent that I cannot really remember who I was before.

And, this, I know for sure, is the feeling of pure alignment with my soul’s desire to create and become more connected to the natural world.

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river running through you, a joy” - Rumi

I began learning with countless online classes and then taking in person classes whenever I could. I was like a sponge. Then, I began to combine my desire to travel, with destination classes. Every encounter and experience nature journaling, near or far, whether sketching the birds in my own back yard, or sitting at sunset in a vineyard in Tuscany…has fed my soul and enriched my life. In addition to my responses in nature, my pages can record my experience of world events or personal events, in need processing. If not for this passion, I would never have had the chance to meet and become friends with so many other artists, teachers, and special people, who share their gifts and time, so generously, in this community, this Tribe. I belong.

“Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire” - Jennifer Lee

Now I’ve been at this about 8 years…I still sometimes have to deal with the monkey mind that says you aren’t good enough - you are not an artist, or, you aren’t legitimately a nature journaler, because your work doesn’t fit in a certain mold. My pages are sometimes pretty, sometimes not, sometimes inspired, sometimes a mess, sometimes more spiritual with quotes or poems, sometimes more factual, sometimes from real life, sometimes from photos. They are sometimes planned, sometimes spontaneous. Some have glued on bits of this or that… all of them are important to me. I am learning to love them all , enriched by the deep memories rooted in me, by the “doing” of these pages.

For me, the reward is not about the end result, as much as it is about the life experience imbedded in that page. It’s about the meditation that comes with total focus.

I hope, if you are just beginning to hear the call to do what you feel drawn to do, whatever it is, that you will take a leap of faith and jump in, with all your heart - to connect more deeply with our fascinating, natural world, and with your own soul.

“When we awaken to the beauty of nature, the doors to our true self are opened wide, for divine healing on all levels” - Robyn Nola

I am so grateful to everyone who has shared a quiet moment or two, sketching with me, feeling the grace and joy that nature journaling brings.

“ I go into nature to be soothed and healed and to have my senses put in order” -John Burroughs

Sketchbook in hand…I will see you “out there” … Karen

My Top Tips:

1. I always begin a new sketchbook with a quote, or poem, that is meaningful to me at that time. I feel it breaks the ice of that first page, and also imbues the book with a deeper awareness. The deeper the connection the more rewarding the experience.

2. My go to mantra is “it’s just paper” and I call upon it whenever the ebee jeebies of self doubt creep in - it does the trick to ground me and get me focused on the moment at hand.

3. There is no need to define my style, or limit myself with a label of some sort…I am a complex, multi dimensional creature, so anything that I create from connection with my authentic self is worthwhile and valuable…to me.

4. Creative energy is cyclical, not constant. Expect to feel it ebb and flow, honor that flow, and trust that it will always return. ( i.e. Don’t stress if you can’t produce something everyday)

5. Use all your senses, trust your intuition. It is through attention that I can see the magic and beauty of ordinary things. It doesn’t always have to be about the big, “wow” moments.

“Let’s take our hearts for a walk in the woods and listen to the magic whispers of old trees”-Unknown

6. Perfection is uninteresting and unattainable anyway… I seek authenticity in connection, not perfection. “I strive for imperfection” -Gay Kreager

7. Be fully present. "We only have this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake” - Sir Frances Bacon

8 . Keep it fresh. Listen to your voice, as it calls you to evolve. Currently loving: continuous line drawing practice and the wisdom of poet, Victoria Erikson.

My favorite book on creativity: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

My Influencers: (kind of in order of when I discovered them) Danny Gregory and everyone at Sketchbook Skool, Gay Kraeger, Cathy Johnson, Val Web, Jan Blencowe, Jane LaFazio, Leslie Fehling, John Muir Laws, everyone at Wild Wonder and the Nature Journal Club, Jean Mackay, Kristin Meuser, Julia Bausenhardt, S. Dion Baker, Jules Woolford and Bethan Burton, of course…and SOOOO many more!!!

Social media

Pinterest boards: Karen Colson — Sketchbooks!, Soul Food, How to: -watercolor tutorials

IG @karenjcolson – I don’t post, but I follow lots of inspirational creatives.

Facebook I post within a few FB groups - i.e. The Nature Journal Club, and private class groups.

Becoming a Nature Journaler

I came late to nature journaling, even though it may be in my DNA: one of my most treasured possessions is a watercolor my grandmother painted in February, 1914, of a crocus, accompanied by a quote from Victorian artist John Ruskin.

In 1977, “The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady,” by Edith Holden, was published, with her watercolor illustrations and commentary. Its gentle beauty captivated my imagination—I wished I could create something so beautiful— but I was on another path, a gardening path, and in 2004, published a book called “The Midwestern Cottage Garden.”

The 1914 crocus

But watercolors called to me, and I bought a small Winsor & Newton set of 14 colors, and tried to paint. They seemed difficult and unpredictable at first, but I was hooked. It was a big day when my order for a 48-color watercolor palette from The Rembrandt Watercolor company arrived from England. I was so excited!

I honestly don’t know how I found my way to John Laws’ book, “The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds.” Maybe it was because one of my first efforts at painting a bird resulted in a cardinal that looked a like a penguin! I needed help!

It was only one more step to nature journaling. I purchased a Pentalic Nature Sketch journal and jumped in. My first page was about the grackles in our back yard. It was so much fun there was no looking back.

There are many wonderful things about nature journaling. Maybe the best thing is that it gives you permission to immerse yourself in nature’s beauty for hours on end. I really was blind to our natural world before I began journaling. Now I see it, and value it.

Another joy of nature journaling is becoming part of the Nature Journal Club, a community on Facebook. Seeing the work of other nature journalers from all over the world is both inspiring and educational.

As I write this on a very cold day in February, I look over to my latest page in progress, which features two eastern gray squirrels and a fox squirrel peering down at me from a horse chestnut tree. So far, the squirrels are the most difficult subjects I have tackled—their expressions are subtle, and they have so much fur! And I am experimenting with colored pencils, which are new to me. Some challenges, but so much fun!

To anyone tempted to try nature journaling, I recommend that you jump in. Be prepared to learn, to try, and to sometimes fail. Your first cardinal might look like a penguin, as mine did, but you will improve, and know the joy of truly seeing nature’s beauty: It may change your life, as it did mine.

About the Author

I was born in Chicago, Illinois, and am a graduate of the University of Illinois. I worked for seventeen years at our local library. In 2004 I published a book called “Midwest Cottage Gardener,” all about gardening in Illinois. Currently, I have a blog called My Illinois Nature Journal,“ about Illinois natural history. I’m retired and spend many enjoyable hours nature journaling. My husband Jim and I (and our kitty Cocoa) live in Saint Charles, Illinois, which is 30 miles west of Chicago.

Nature journaling as a source of creativity

Hi, I’m Christiane Weismüller from Germany. I photograph, paint, draw and write to celebrate the beauty of nature.

For me nature journaling is not about your special skills in drawing, writing, naming, measureing or observing but about your creativity. It is about to respond to the special situation outdoors and then to choose, which of these elements would fit best and how.

You will see that each of my pages are different: Some contain biological information, others not, some contain a poem, some not, some are drawn more realistic and others even look more like a cartoon :)

I’d like to share with you some things about the “making of” of some pages and what I have learnt during these processes.

Don’t interfere with nature!

This was a very spontaneous page: I was so delighted about the rain, because it was a very dry spring since then! So I run out in our little garden and tried to draw something, apply some watercolor and then unexpectedly the raindrops painted with me :) At first I cried out: “Oh no, it ruined everything!” But then I thought, well, its raining on the page, too, it has to be like that!

So, don’t interfere with nature, but integrate what she offers you in your page and by the way it is wise to do this in your garden, too :)

Don’t struggle with time!

This post about the carpenter bee I drew during the last International Nature Journaling Week when the prompt was to draw insects.

As you see, I drew this amazing bee and its relatives in different ways even on one page - sometimes realistic, sometimes with biological information and sometimes more like a cartoon with a kind of speech. This was the result of the amazing speed with which this big bee moved over and into my poppies. I was very impressed by its helicopter-like movements and its really loud buzz :)

 So, when you have not much time for any reasons, try to capture the essential – anything is always better than nothing! Afterwards you can turn to the internet or a field guide as I did and try to add some more realistic features if you want to.

Don’t bother about reality!

This is a page I create from very different sources: my nature finds, my photography and even my memories. I love the sea but last year I couldn‘t spend time there, so I decided to draw something “marine” at least. I turned to my sea finds, old photographs and the impressions which are stored in my pictorial memory. Then there was space left in the “water part”. Such space is often good for some text element like naturalist notes, quotes or a little poem. I decided to choose a quote by the amazing Sylvia Earle, marine biologist and ocean protector. 

Text is a often neglected part in our nature journals. I turn to this topic by explaining my next page to you.

Don’t be afraid of poetry!

One of the specialties of this page is its little poem. A poem is a good way to capture something  you can’t draw for any reason or to express your emotional and associative reactions to any of your  observations. Oh, I know, you are maybe not a poet, but most of us nature journalers are neither artists nor biologists, aren’t we? So that’s no excuse ;)

For a start it is good to have a little structure to cling to. The Japanese haiku will give you all you need: three short lines with 5-7-5 syllables. Haikus are originally nature poems and arise from noticing special moments in nature. Does this ring a bell? Yes, you can apply John Muir Law’s prompts “I notice, I wonder, it reminds me of” directly to your haiku writing: Three prompts, three lines, it‘s so easy, you see :) So you are half on the way to poem writing! 

 My haiku was created by writing down an observation quickly, since the swans were barely visible:

 “A pair of swans leave only a contour in the snow-coloured sky.”

Then I wrote the first version without paying much attention to the correct number of the syllables, but rather to the overall impression:

“A white contour in the snowy sky - 

flapping wings in winter.”

And finally I went to the shortening and the number of syllables:

“Just a contour 

in the cloudy sky -

swans in winter.”

Note that this is only a translation of my German haiku which you can see on the picture, there the number of syllables are right.

Never mind, you don‘t have to bother too much about the 5-7-5 structure. Like all other elements of nature journaling poems and haikus are there to serve you and you don‘t have to serve them!

The important thing is the shortness and the haiku moment your poem expresses. Take a look at what I left out: “white”, “snow”, “wings”. Haikus and other short poems live from images and  associations, so you don’t have to tell the whole “story”. Have some room left for imagination! That’s a fundamental esthetic principle in most of Japanese art.

To sum up

Have fun and insights through drawing, writing, observing nature in whatever way you like!

I hope my different processes of nature journaling are an inspiration for your own.

Let your nature journal be a place to play with possibilities, associations and memories, let it be a source of creativity for you and your life!

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About the author

I am an artist, writer and adult educator. I am a passionate naturalist, so my art is always inspired by nature!

I create photographs, paintings and drawings. Due to my education as Master of Literature and Linguistics at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany I enjoy working with text. Being outside, I like observing closely the changes of nature during the seasons. I look for possibilities to reconnect with nature to increase awareness and motivation to protect her. 

I regularly teach nature photography, nature painting and creative writing workshops and I want to organize nature journaling groups in the Rhine Main Area in Germany where I live.

Find more of Christiane’s work on her website weismueller-photography.com, view her nature journaling blog here  and join her on Instagram @christianeweismueller.nature or #nature_journaling_germany.

Your nature journal as a time capsule

Edith Holden’s Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady  is an iconic publication. Edith kept the diary for a year, in 1906, and with beautiful illustrations and writing recorded the countryside she found around her, both at home and on her travels. She included not only drawings and paintings, but also poetry, proverbs and sayings, and important dates and festivals, along with dated written entries describing the weather, her observations of the natural world, and background information about many of the plants, birds, insects and animals that she saw. 

Edith didn’t write the diary for publication; it remained in her husband’s family, and was eventually published in 1977, some 57 years after her death. I was a small child when the book was published, but I remember how popular it was – everyone seemed to have a copy! I loved looking at the pictures, and it no doubt inspired my early forays into drawing and into nature.

 So, when I found myself re-inspired by nature journalling some decades later, I bought a second-hand copy of the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady and settled down for a read – and got a bit of a surprise! In one of the early entries, on January 18th, Edith describes ‘a curious oak tree, growing in a field near Elmdon Park’. Elmdon Park? That sounds familiar! I hadn’t realised that when she kept the diary, Edith had been living very close to where I grew up in Solihull and south Birmingham, UK. I read on, finding references to other familiar places – St Bernard’s Road, Widney Lane, Packwood Hall, Olton, Bentley Heath, Knowle, Baddesley Clinton, Catherine de Barnes, Bickenhill…

Often Edith describes (and paints) the plants she finds on her wanderings around Warwickshire, writing lists associated with places. It’s a fantastic snapshot of what was there. One observation really caught my eye: ‘Along a lane just above Balsall, I came suddenly upon a great flock of Meadow Brown butterflies. I had seen numbers of them all along the way, but here the air was thick with them flying hither and thither…’ (July 21st). I honestly cannot imagine finding Meadow Browns (or any other butterfly) in such huge numbers, in the Warwickshire countryside, today. It brings home what we have lost, what we never even knew.

The time-capsule quality of the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady got me thinking about my own nature journalling. I live in a rural corner of Cambridgeshire, but the threat of development is ever present. There’s not much space in these small islands, and change will almost certainly come. A lot of my journalling is based on what I see and hear when I’m out walking or running, so is tied to a place and time, although I’m certainly not as thorough as Edith was in surveying, especially plants! But still, it’s a snapshot of an afternoon, or a trip out somewhere, and I try to be descriptive both in drawing and writing about what I’ve seen. Journalling about the everyday natural world, the things we see on our daily journeys, or even just looking out of the window, provides a rich – and highly personal – source of information, a window onto our particular world, that will surely fascinate in the years ahead.

Edith’s Warwickshire patch is still rural in nature, but things have, of course, changed immensely since 1906. Farming methods have changed. Roads have been built, lots of them. There’s now an international airport on her doorstep – the very first airplane ever flew in 1903, only three years before Edith kept her diary. There are some areas that she would still recognise, but the sheer amount of road-building and infrastructure has greatly altered the landscape. It’s hard to imagine how much has changed, how much has been lost, but Edith Holden’s Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady is a time-capsule – an eye-witness account of her everyday natural world.

And mine and yours can be too. In the shadow of the pandemic there is appetite for change in how we interact with nature, how we live our lives. Will it happen? Can we change our trajectory? Maybe in the decades to come our families will be able to look at the changing world we lived in, through the everyday observations in our journals – that alone makes it a meaningful and exciting project!

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About the Author

I live in a small village in Cambridgeshire, UK, happily surrounded by fields and nature. I especially enjoy drawing and sketching inspired by the natural world, and am looking forward to resuming leading nature journal sessions with my local Wildlife Trust.

Instagram: @sharoncambs 

Facebook: SharonsPics   

Blog: cambsnaturenotes.blogspot.com

A journaling journey

As nature journalers we are, I think, guardians of the natural history we record. It is our observations that make us part of the citizen science community and, hopefully, when we post to social media, we are able to make others aware of the natural world and the need to preserve it. With nature journaling there is no “one size fits all”. It doesn’t matter how someone else writes or draws; we all have our own individual styles, but our similarities are greater than our differences. We are all observers and recorders.

A love of nature was instilled into me early in life by my father and grandfather. Both were originally townsmen who became good countrymen. On long walks with their guidance, my sister and I learnt to identify plants, birds, and animals. In rural Kent we roamed free and, guided by the seasons, were able to collect flowers and wild fruits. We knew where to find the first primroses and banks of sweet violets, the best blackberries, and then sweet chestnuts in autumn. Looking back on this time, it was quite magical and a thing that many children of today miss out on as parents are now too scared to let them out on their own. When we moved down to Devon, we wandered the lanes and fields quite free and without fear, observing all the time.

I was, and am still, enchanted by the Ladybird books: What to look for in… with the marvelous Charles Tunnicliffe illustrations. These had a huge impact on me as well as British Wild Animals by David Stephens. My Grandfather bought me this book long before I could read.

It wasn’t until 2003 that I began keeping a nature journal. I started keeping lists of birds I had seen when I was out and about, but I always left room at the side as I had in my mind that I would add illustrations at some stage; however, this didn’t happen for another ten years. By this time the lists had progressed to making notes and including plants; photographs were added and so the pages became a journal. The initial book took several years to fill.

For a few years, I lived in North Vancouver and kept a journal of the nature sightings–mainly in my garden. It was fascinating to see different wildlife. I didn’t wander around so much, as some of the local wildlife was known to be on the dangerous side. My journal from that time is largely made up of photographs, but it is a journal nevertheless.

On returning to England, I settled on the Warwickshire-Worcestershire border and my journals have really become a big part of my life. It took a while before I settled on the style the journals take now, but they are constantly evolving, and I don’t have any fast and hard rules as to how I illustrate. I still make pages of notes, which I find are essential as they remind me of things I haven’t illustrated and natural events that have taken place. I have just started to keep a calendar of daily weather conditions and temperatures, which, I hope in future years, will show how the climate has changed. I continue to wander around the fields uninterrupted. A walk is never simply a walk; I always have my binoculars and camera with me so that I have images to draw from. I look forward to the seasons changing so I can record what is happening and refer back to the previous year to see if there are changes. Some things change little. I know from my records that about May 13 the swifts will be back–although one year they didn’t appear until May 29 due to storms over the Sahara. Other things are changing quite rapidly: Hazel Catkins appear much earlier. As a child Catkins were associated with March and Spring; my first sighting for this season was at the end of November–four months early!

Currently with the restrictions that COVID-19 has brought, it is not possible to go further afield and record different areas in my journal. So, I hope to make a more detailed study of places within walking distance. I thoroughly enjoy the recording process, I do it for my own pleasure and to leave a record for future generations of my family.

Nicola Allan is a retired Food and Textiles teacher. Her journal artwork is done mainly in watercolour and pencil. Work is either done from samples or photographs she has captured.

Nicola posts her journal pages regularly on Instagram.

Nature Journal South Africa: A community connected by journaling nature

Cati Vawda, Thembani Luthuli, Mbalenhle Zulu, Tanya Dayaram & Yousuf Vawda.

About photo: it is our, referred to in the text, first NJ Outing at Palmiet Nature Reserve as Durban NJ Club - People from Left-Right: Mbali Zulu, Cati Vawda, Thembani Luthuli and his 4 yo daughter Sesethu

The Nature Journal South Africa community first met as the Durban Nature Journal Club in March 2018, at the Palmiet Nature Reserve - a suburb of Durban, South Africa. Although there were four of us on that day, many others were vital to that first and later gatherings. This is the story of our journey to the present - currently a network of more than 60 individuals.

Beginning our journey

During 2010, Cati Vawda and Thembani Luthuli started to re-wild a suburban lawn in Durban. The space is part of the Indian Ocean Coastal Forest biome from which it had been carved. Together we learned which plants were indigenous to this local patch and nurtured them. We learned which plants were invasive or exotic, and removed them. We continue to remove plants harmful to the habitat and the ecosystems it supports. After a few years of removing the lawn and planting locally indigenous plants, we left the habitat to develop on its own. A sliver of wild. 

We began nature journaling in a process of shared learning and stewardship during the rehabilitation process. At first, we did not have a name for it. Then around 2014, we found the term - nature journaling – through John Muir (aka Jack) Laws’ online workshop videos.  The term described much of the way of we were connecting with nature: observing, recording, asking and seeking answers to questions, connecting learning with active stewardship. The idea took hold, and the term became a tool. This tool transformed our connections with nature and other people. 

How NJ changed our connection with nature

Thembani explains this change:

“We did not take nature serious before (nature journaling). Nature was just nature, nothing was noticed about living or non-living things. Working as a gardener, we (Cati and I) learned a lot about garden and plants. From plants and the garden, we started noticing things like insects and other things. That is where our nature journaling started.”                          

He explains how he sees nature since starting nature journaling: 

“Nature is good, beautiful, fun and exciting.”                       

 Cati’s starting point was different, but came to a similar place:

“Nature has always been an important part of my life. Growing up, I enjoyed the benefits of nature typical of my White middle-class privilege – nature as recreation - safely and easily available. I grew up in the wooded and stream-laced outreaches of suburban United States, beyond the reaches of a heavily polluted city. Here, nature was infused in every aspect of my life.

My relationship with nature changed as I moved to different parts of the world. Though I appreciated the beauty, I was unable to “read nature”. Nature was present, important, but undifferentiated, unnamed and unknown. I wanted to feel connected with what I saw, heard, smelled and sensed. It is only more recently that I am learning about the long natural and human history of Durban and South Africa which is now my home. Nature journaling has enabled me to connect with nature locally, first with Thembani and later with others including Mbali Zulu.”

Mbali Zulu and Cati are neighbours. They met through Mbali’s grandmother, Nomusa Zulu, with whom Mbali lives. Mbali explains how nature journaling deepened her connection with nature:

“I have always been into flowers. My father gave me a beautiful name which is Mbalenhle, and Mbalenhle means a beautiful flower in Zulu. I wanted to know why my father was intrigued by flowers. I was never interested in other parts of nature.

 I started nature journaling in 2016. I was interested in finding out more about plants, flowers and their different names and a whole lot more. This is when I met Aunty Cati, I asked her to help me find a specific plant. I knew she would be more than willing to help me, and she was indeed. Later on, we spoke about nature journaling. She asked if I would be interested and indeed, I was.

 Now my relationship with nature has grown so much, I notice every little thing when I’m walking to school or when I’m in a taxi going somewhere with my gogo (grandmother). I’m so aware of everything, and it feels so good when I just know more about nature, and I love it.”

Mbali Zulu sums up the benefits of nature journaling for us as individuals:

“For me it was finding a way to engage with nature and relaxing, breathing is something I learnt in nature journaling. Being able to see nature on another level was great. It was way bigger than just seeing trees, grass, flowers and all the different animals. It’s way greater than that, we just have to look for it.”

First Steps towards Community

About photo: Nature Journal Outing at Japanese Gardens, Durban, South Africa. People from front and clockwise to back and around: Tanya Dayaram, Cati Vawda, Bongani Chisale, Yousuf Vawda and Lisa Dayaram

When Mbali and Cati looked for that first plant together, Mbali’s enthusiasm and joy at learning about plants came through strongly, energising both of us. It built on the experiences of Thembani and Cati as nature journal buddies, and with members of the Palmiet Nature Reserve team: S’thembile Ngobese, Nolwazi Mbatha and Mbali Zuma. We all wanted to improve our nature journaling skills and to explore local nature-rich spaces together. 

The more we nature journaled, the more we experienced the need for a local nature journaling community.

Before 2018, nature journaling was not widely known in South Africa. We had not found a nature journaling group, or anyone willing to organise regular activities in South Africa, or even on the continent!  We wanted to support each other, to share progress and problems, to learn from others with a common interest in journaling, nature, wildlife, ecosystems, and environmental justice. 

Foundations of our community

We all want to respect nature and each other. Our code of conduct (The Nature Journalers’ Code of Conduct) is common ground to guide us in putting respect into practice. It is central to the foundations on which we are building our community.  

It includes the following:

WHO - Anyone and everyone

• All ages, genders, identities & descriptions.

• All languages, cultures & beliefs.

• All economic conditions & social circumstances.

• All abilities, types and levels of education and training, skills, knowledge & experiences.

• Connecting people in and across all communities from remote rural areas to townships to dense cities.

WHY 

• To support individuals and groups to develop and deepen their nature connections. 

• To redress environmental injustice by connecting us as people, and as people with place through the common tool of nature journaling.

• To encourage actions to protect and heal the environment.

HOW

• By slowing down and showing up for nature. 

• By learning about nature from nature, linking bush to books and research, and nature connection to actions through which we serve as eco-stewards.

• Through personal, professional and programmatic nature journaling.

• By paying it forward, and sharing with dignity not charity.

• By being respectful of different ways of knowing: scientific, cultural, linguistic, beliefs and traditions including learning about the histories of how we have created knowledge in diverse contexts.
   

In May 2019, we started a website with a focus on South African - and Southern Hemisphere - specific resources. The website also serves as an entry point to the many resources available globally. In the process we changed our name to Nature Journal South Africa. The blog provides a platform for members share their experiences. Marianne de Jager’s post beautifully describes how a visit to Qunu connected nature journaling with conservation. Lee Dickson’s post shares her reflections on lichen as a metaphor for our community.

We encourage nature-focused groups and programmes to integrate nature journaling into their activities. This includes promoting the revival of field notes by professionals, nature guides, scientists, artists, writers, musicians, language and culture activists. This hope has been realised with the local Durban bird club BirdLife Port Natal, the KwaZulu-Natal branch of Botanical Artists Association of Southern Africa and Wildlife ACT Community Conservation Programme.

Group around table: Community Conservation Team, Wildlife ACT, introducing nature journaling for conservation education programmes with young people.

Sign with name of specific location.

Reflections on our Journey

As a community of nature journalers, we reach out to all people, to embrace the world, and our places in these spaces. We prioritise nature journaling involving people historically and systematically excluded from and dispossessed of land, and facilitate access to nature-rich spaces.

The history of nature-rich, protected wild spaces, and membership in conservation and nature groups in South Africa is predominantly White and often middle-class. Indigenous, Black and Brown peoples were systematically and forcefully removed from these spaces, and then denied access to them. Indigenous, Black and Brown peoples’ present and historical knowledge of nature and their contributions to science is minimised or ignored. These are some of lasting effects of apartheid and colonialism which keep South Africans separated by race, language, economics and power.  

“The nature journaling community is important. 
It brings us together from different races, communities and backgrounds.” - Thembani

Skills Building session at Durban Botanic Gardens. People from front left and clockwise: Nolwazi Mbatha, Cati Vawda, Lee Dickson and Yousuf Vawda

Imagining a Different Future

Since the beginning of the 2020, our ways of living have changed fundamentally. For many, including NJSA members, outings are on hold. We stay in contact online and support each other to connect with nature through nature journaling, to find peace, reprieve and restoration. Looking back, we have experienced how nature journaling profoundly enriches our lives. During these uncertain and difficult times, it relaxes and calms us. It has fulfilled the promise of inner peace and quiet by meaningfully connecting us with and as part of nature. 

The values that guided us from the start, continue to be essential to our nature journaling practice, as individuals and as a community. Nature journaling helps our mental, physical and social health whatever our circumstances. During these difficult times, nature journaling continues to connect us as individuals and as a group. The NJSA community continues to connect through a chat group during lockdown. It gives us a relatively inexpensive way to communicate without internet access.

“I think that the (our) group is very successful because of the chat. I live a really long way away. And it is such an important link.” - Snooks Cole

We support each other by sharing stories, inspiration, encouragement and laughter. The #NJSA_lockdown_edition initiated by Tanya Dayaram, a member of NJSA,  displays the collective of shared pages and posts during the March to May period of lockdown in South Africa. To view it, see this blog post.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given us a global magnifying glass for the human costs and harm from our ongoing destruction of nature and wild spaces. It has brought into focus the inequities on which our “normal” was based, as well as the histories that created these realities. Some of us are able to shelter at home, to look onto or walk in gardens or along streets, masked and safely distanced. The majority of people in South Africa, and in many parts of the world, live in crowded areas, without adequate water, sanitation, food or telecommunications such as internet or mobile access.  Our challenge for the future is how we, as nature journalers, contribute to create diverse communities and a society that is compassionate, healthy, just, equitable and sustainable for both humans and other life forms, as well as for the many habitats - which make up this planet - our only home.

On behalf of Nature Journal South Africa

Cati Vawda

Thembani Luthuli

Mbalenhle Zulu

Tanya Dayaram

Yousuf Vawda

Please note that all photos were taken pre-COVID, before social distancing and masks were part of being safe and keeping others protected.

Nature journaling with the fungi

Mushrooms are my absolute favorite subjects for nature journaling, so I am excited to share some tips and techniques for observing and appreciating fungi with the use of a journal! 

Fungi are very diverse, surprising, mysterious, and often fleeting features of the natural landscape. Their non-determinate growth, rapid fruiting cycle, seasonality, and fussy habitat preferences would pique the curiosity of any naturalist. There is so much to learn about fungi, though I believe that they will always hold mysteries no matter how much we study them. 

Nature journalists love subjects that allow for deep inquiry. We like to ask questions not to find answers, but to find deeper questions. We relish in curiosity and wonder, mystery and confusion. A single collection of mushrooms can offer many hours, even days of fodder for a nature journalist.

Gathering

Mushrooms (along with shelves, jellies, puffballs, and cups) are the fruiting bodies of the organism, which is otherwise integrated into the substrate as a system of cells called mycelium. Like plucking an apple from the tree, picking the mushroom does not kill the fungus, so it is perfectly acceptable to gather mushrooms for closer examination. 

Lichens (or lichenized fungi) are a whole package of fungal fruiting bodies, mycelium and symbiotic algae and/or cyanobacteria. They are slow growing and should be collected sparingly, ideally from fallen branches. 

When gathering mushrooms, take note of your surrounding habitat, especially the tree species. Many mushrooms grow in association with tree roots, and are only found under certain kinds of trees. 

Take detailed notes of the substrate type. Are they growing from the ground, a log, wood chips, or a grassy lawn? What kind of ground, what type of wood? It is especially important to note hard wood vs. soft wood, living wood vs. dead wood, and other features may be important too, such as how decomposed it is. There are some fungi that grow specifically on strange substrates such as dung, cones, and even carpet! 

When you find mushrooms, notice the growth arrangements. Is it solitary, or in a cluster, are they scattered gregariously, or growing in fairy ring? Consider making a sketch of their growth habits, or a ‘landscapito’ of their preferred habitat type. 

When picking a mushroom, be sure to collect the whole thing. Avoid cutting the stipe (stalk) if you can, instead dig it out. There may be some interesting features in the stipe that are important, and you may even find that it is growing from something that is buried under the surface. If you can, collect a range of ages, from young buttons to ones that have fully matured. 

Immediately after you pick, take a close look at the coloration. Are there any faint tints of hues that might fade over time? Is there cottony powder, or cobwebby material? Is it bruising and if so what is the color of the bruise when it is fresh? Does the fungus have a unique odor or fragrance? 

Has the fungus released spores onto nearby surfaces, and if so what are their color? For shelf fungi, sometimes the spores form a film on the top of the shelf. If the conditions are right, you can sometimes see spores release from cup fungi by breathing into the cup, like you would do to fog a pair of glasses before cleaning them.  

Treat your specimens gently, or they will soon lose much of their beauty and appeal.  Clean off debris with a brush before stowing them. I like to put mine in a small pail, but Tupperware, baskets, or paper bags work as well. Avoid plastic bags if possible, they will suffocate and squish the mushrooms. Keep specimens cool, or in the fridge until you are ready to look at them, but ideally you would get started right away. 

Lichens are extremely hardy, desiccate perfectly, and can remain viable for long periods of time. Rehydrate them with a spray bottle before getting started and they will spring back to life! 

 
FIELD NOTES:

Habitat Type
Tree Species
Substrate
Growth/Distribution Patterns
Fragrance/Odor
Bruising 
Faint Colorations
Delicate Features

 
Examining the details

When mushroom season hits, I like to set up a workstation for my investigations. Cover a table in newspaper and hope that your family is participating, encouraging, or at least tolerant of your hobby. 

In addition to my journaling supplies, I also like to have field guides, a cutting surface, containers and trays, dissection kit or a knife, white and black paper for spore prints, ruler, hand lens/magnifier, and a compound microscope. 

I usually start by sketching the mushroom or if there are multiple, sketch the different growth phases. As nature journalists know, drawing focuses attention and causes us to notice more details. I usually end up taking my mushrooms apart, so I like to be sure to have my drawings at least outlined before I begin dissecting them. I like to orient my mushrooms so that I can see both the underside and the top of the cap in one view.

Even if you wont be coloring your page, take notes on the coloration of all parts, including gills, cap, and stipe. Colors may fade with age, so noting the color can be important for identification later on. Look for coloration and texture patterns, such as concentric rings on the cap or features on the cap margin.

Once I have my mushrooms sketched, I like to prepare a spore print. If you are interested in identifying your specimen, then learning the spore color is usually the first and most crucial step. 

To take a spore print, remove a mature cap, and place it on sturdy paper with the gills facing down. Place an overturned bowl on top, and if the cap is dry, put a bead of water on top. Avoid soggy caps, as they will just leave a water stain. Ideally, leave it to print overnight. Some caps drop billions of spores quickly, while others may never really give you a good print. Many mushrooms have white spores, so some people use half white/half black paper, but I find that white spores are easily visible even on white paper. I have had some success in preserving spore prints by carefully covering them with a strip of packaging tape, but drawing the spore print might make a longer lasting image. 

Most mushroom field guides have diagrams of various features and terminology for fungi. This is a great way to start to examine your mushrooms. See how many features you can identify about your specimens. 

If your mushroom has gills (as opposed to pores, teeth, cups, or some other spore bearing surface), then you will want to take a close look at them. Are they attached to the stipe/stalk, or can you easily remove the cap from the stipe without tearing the gills? Do the gills run down the stalk? Are they distant or crowded? Check young specimens for gill color. Once the mushroom releases spores, the gills might change color due to the spores. 

Notice additional features such as veil remnants (when the cap separates from the stipe, it may leave a skirt or other such clues), overall shape of the cap and stipe, measurements, and the texture of the flesh. To take a cross section, you can often just pull the mushroom apart in a perfect division. 

If you have a compound microscope, you can take a look at the spores. Spore shape can sometimes be necessary for identification, but I like to check them out and include them in my journal page regardless.  If you don't have a microscope, a hand lens or magnifying glass will allow you to see tiny features such as scales or fishnet patterns on the surface of your mushrooms.

EXAMINE:

Type of spore-bearing surface (gills, pores, cups, teeth, etc.)
Gill attachment, color and spacing (if present)
Cap shape
Stipe shape, texture, and fill (if present)
Spore print color and spore shape
Texturing, ornamentation, other unique features

The identification challenge

I actually started keeping a nature journal as part of a mycology course, because identifying mushrooms requires detailed habitat notes, dissections, microscopic examination, and deductive reasoning through the use of dichotomous keys. A nature journal is the perfect thing to keep track of this landslide of information.

Mushroom identification is both challenging and attainable. It requires practice and learned familiarity – things that nature journaling has prepared you for! Embrace the unknown. Do not be disappointed when you cannot identify the fungi that you find. It will happen. 

Also, do not expect your identified mushrooms to have common names. While common names for birds are highly reliable, common names for fungi are highly non-existent! Sometimes I feel like publishers simply make them up for the sake of standardized formatting. I suppose that the people who care enough to discern many of the types of fungi are the same that also enjoy learning the scientific names, and this particular field is where the reliability is very significant.  

Chances are high that the mushroom you found isn’t even in the field guide that you have, but there is still a huge value in trying to identify them anyway, as long as you aren’t attached to finding an answer. The process will cause you to scrutinize your mushroom and teach you what features you should be looking for. It will also help you hone in on the group of fungi that yours belongs to.  Looking at field guides will familiarize you with common fungi, so when you see them in the field, you will recall them from the book, and you will be able to identify them. 

When it comes to identification, I start with my tried and true copy of Mushrooms Demystified by David Aurora. This is a guide that uses dichotomous keys, which is the way to reliably identify fungi. It is a California based guide, but it covers United States and Canada. Even though I’m in Alaska, and many of the names have undergone revisions, I use it as my primary guide and have a large number of other smaller field guides that serve as cross-references, especially when it comes to photos. 

If you want to get serious about identifying fungi, you must learn to use keys. One way to practice as a beginner is to find an obvious species that you know, and then use the key from the beginning until you reach the known outcome. Keys are challenging to learn, and with all challenges come some frustration, but once you get the hang of it, it’s like detective work as you rule out all the things that your mushroom is NOT until hopefully you land on what it IS. Mushrooms keys are especially bizarre, as your options might fluctuate between the microscopic features of a spore, to “sort of smells like red-hots and dirty socks”. The combination of objectively technical traits and whimsical impressions makes mushroom identification pretty entertaining.

If you feel like you’ve found it, double-check the descriptions and cross-reference with other guides. Online searches are sometimes helpful with confirmations, but be wary! Information and photos of the more obscure fungi are very scant and unreliable through general search methods.

I have a few great guides that are specific to my region and have many of our most common species. I suggest finding the most regionally specific guides that you can. 

It is the vast diversity and short windows of opportunities that have kept me intrigued and engaged with fungi identification for over 10 years. Just do your best, and embrace the challenge!

 
Foraging for edibles

I absolutely love foraging for wild edible mushrooms. Similar to keeping a nature journal, wild foraging will cause you to see your natural environment with new eyes. Soon you will be picking up on habitat clues that you had never considered before, such as angle and aspect of slope, age and species of tree stands, understory composition and humidity, and a whole host of other factors that will lend to a holistic and intuitive understanding of the ecosystems that fungi inhabit. 

Mushroom hunting nurtures a 6th sense. No other activity has me scrambling under logs and jumping over fences quite like mushroom hunting. I find myself in the most unlikely places simply because I have a hunch that I might find a delectable edible in the vicinity. They don’t necessarily grow where it’s easy to search for them!

 I am an avid mushroom forager, but my appreciation and interest in mycology goes much deeper than that. “Can I eat this?” is by far the most common question I hear from people when it comes to mushrooms, and I find it a bit irksome. The answer theoretically could range from “yes it’s delicious” to “no, it will kill you” but probably falls under the spectrum of “if you like to eat cardboard” to “if you like to eat slimy mush”.  Many mushrooms are technically edible, just like many plants are technically edible, but most of us don’t go around munching on the leaves and twigs in our yards.

Personal peeves aside, if mushroom edibility is the thing that inspires people to start learning about and appreciating mushrooms, then I highly encourage wild foraging! Despite popular warnings, you do not have to be an expert at identification to start wild foraging. The secret is to learn what wild edibles grow in your area, learn how to distinguish these from others or look-alikes, and simply target only those species. 

Let the habitat guide you, as you learn what conditions favor your selected mushrooms. My friends and I call it “dec-hab”, short for decent habitat. This is the preferred approach to wild harvesting anyway, considering that there are so many species of fungi, and that they can be so difficult to identify with certainty. Better to seek the ones you know to be good, than to ask if the ones that you found are. 

 If you do find a nice basket of edibles, proceed with caution! Ask for a confirmation on your identification (pretty easy with all the online groups and forums these days). Eat only a small amount at first. Many people have allergic reactions or gastrointestinal intolerances to mushrooms, so ‘edibility’ can be different from person to person. Also, anyone can get sick from over-indulgence (I certainly have). I always thoroughly cook my mushrooms. 

Wherever your fungal fancies may take you, I hope that these curious, weird and gorgeous growths will enhance your nature journaling and inquiry experience time and time again. Happy hunting! 

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My journey with nature journaling and the tips I've learned

We, nature journalers, all have something in common: our love from nature! And mine came from my parents. They both love nature and introduced me to it from a very young age. In addition to that, until the age of 7 we lived in a house in the middle of the woods, so I really did have a lot of contact with nature from a young age.

Both my mother and my father kept nature journals (my father more about biology and my mother about geology) which inspired me to start my own for the first time (when I was 7 was years old). But that didn't really work out.

My father’s nature journal

My mother’s nature journal

When I was 13, I tried it again and that time it went a lot better! But in the end it also didn't work out because I had one main problem: I was trying to make a perfectly beautiful nature journal that looked like a book. I would search for all the information that went into my journal, draw perfectly, etc. And even though it looked beautiful and I loved it, it led to a very small number of entries and to a huge fear of writing and drawing on the pages.

My first nature journal - age 7

My second nature journal - age 13

Now we get to the nature journal I have currently (at the age of 17). I simply love how it is turning out and the way it is working! It took a lot of trial and error (as you can see on this post) but I think I finally found my style and the way it works best for me. I have been doing a lot of entries on it and I'm really proud of the way it is turning out.

My current nature journal - age 17

These are the main things that I learned from my expirience and use in my current nature journal that I think make a huge difference (and also some personal tips for making a nature journal):

• Using a stitch bound sketchbook will help you fight the urge to rip out pages that turn out less good or pretty. It also allows you to draw something across a spread of two pages, which can be very useful.

• Using a sketchbook that isn't too expensive will help you lose the fear of writing and painting.

• Using a sketchbook with mixed-media paper allows to use basically any kind of writing and drawing medium (watercolor, colored pencils, ink, gouache, graphite, even collages) and even to mixed them together (I've recently found out that watercolour with colored pencils is the way it works the best for me).

• If you are interested in drawing animals, plants and fungi… buying a folding magnifying glass is going to be really, really useful because of how practical it is.

• If you are using watercolors, using a kneadable eraser will minimize the the amount of paper worn out, allowing the paper to take more watercolor.

• Drawing in the field is a completely different and unique experience! If you can journal in the field (sometimes you can't do it, and that's completely okay), do it. I promise you will love it.

• It is a nature jounal, not a nature book! So don't try to make it look like a book… experiment, sketch, have fun!

• In case you are drawing something that moves, you can draw a simple diagram showing the movement. I find this really beautiful and useful and usualy do them in black and white to keep it simple.

• And my biggest tip and the thing I take as the most important in my journal: write and draw what you see and what you discover! Write your theories and thoughts about the subject you are journaling about. You can always research after it and write down what you find in that research, but always keep registered your theories as well! And if you find out your theory was wrong, simply write a note on the side saying something like “my theory was wrong, what is right is…. “ and fill it with the information you know is right. That is the beauty of a nature journal, seeing one’s thoughts, ideas, theories and points of view of the world (and more specificly the nature) we live in.

And this is my post for International Nature Journaling Week, I hope you liked it, it was useful and that you will participate in this amazing week!

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Find more of Afonso’s nature journal pages on Instagram @obscurusnix.

Digital nature journaling with Procreate

I first started nature journaling a few years ago and I’ve experimented with several different types of paint along the way. I started with Acrylic. This paint was just not opaque enough for me. Next I tried Casein which I really like, but it has a very limited range of colors available. I finally settled on gouache and acrylic gouache. I’ve done most of my nature journal pages with these 2 over the last couple of years. But lately I’ve been doing pages with the Procreate app on my iPad. It’s a fun way work. The technique I’m using is a variation of my gouache technique with a few wonderful differences. One difference is the ability to work in layers. This allows you to make all types of adjustments and techniques that just aren’t options in the traditional world. Here are a few pages created with Procreate. With the 30 second time lapse, you can get an idea of the process.

Procreate Time-lapse - Justicia
This is a Procreate Time-lapse of my garden journal page for 4-14-20.

Procreate Time-lapse -  Bird of Paradise
This is a Procreate Time-lapse of my garden journal page for 5-2-20.

Sonoran Desert Spring
This is a Procreate Time-lapse of my nature journal page for 5-21-20. 
Ironwood Trees are blooming!

For a more in depth information on Gouache, Acrylic Gouache and Procreate, check out Bill’s Skillshare and YouTube channels.

Nature Finds in my journal

I’m a scientist, and I love to draw. I’ve always been fascinated by nature, since I was very small, and I learned to love drawing when I wasn’t that much bigger. I studied Zoology at University. But I tend to call myself a ‘Biologist’ rather than a Zoologist now, because I spend a lot of time working with plants. When I was a student, I quickly worked out the best way to learn anatomy was to draw it, and I’ve been doing that ever since. I’ve always been more of a ‘lab person’ than a ‘field person’ – I like to collect things, bring them home, look at them under magnifiers, pull them apart, learn all about them and then draw them. My journals are mostly like lab books rather than field notes, and my subjects could all be described as found objects, found in nature. 

I started a perpetual journal at the beginning of this year. Actually, it was supposed to start at the beginning of 2019, but I made a mistake. I bought a big, fancy, hardback leather-bound journal and when I came to start drawing in it, I had an attack of ‘blank page fear’ and didn’t want to spoil the journal. So, I put it away to wait for some better reason to use it in the future, and carried on journaling in scruffy little concertina sketchbooks I make with my favourite drawing paper (Lambeth Drawing Cartridge) and a couple of bits of cardboard from my paper recycling bin. Thinking about it, all my journals are recording something specific – a period in time, a particular plant, comparing plant features, planning a project, recording a trip… Although I like the idea of the perpetual journal – mark out the pages with dates through the year, and then add something on the  pages every year, no pressure to draw on every page every year, and over a number of years everything comes together like magic – I didn’t really know quite what it was that I wanted to record in this big smart book. During the year, it came to me; I would use this book to record my observations of nature – plants and animals, close to home, in and around our garden, the river, woodland and open moors that are within walking and running distance. Bringing my finds home to investigate, but everything collected on foot. 

Suddenly that big book was no longer daunting, and I didn’t need to worry about carrying it around outside – it’s a studio project. I go out, I find stuff that interests me, I look at it, and research it, and then I draw and write about it. As things turned out, I’ve spent a lot more time at home than I expected this year, holidays and trips all cancelled; I wander along my stretch of river most evenings, looking closely at plants, watching them change by the day or week. Always on the lookout for what I might take home with me from my runs – a bunch of Equisetum or Typha, and I’m keeping a close eye on that dead hare under a hedge until the skeleton is ready to come home - that will be such an amazing thing to investigate and draw. My work in this journal is often detailed, with dissections. It’s a place where I’m learning unexpected things about everyday plants… that the yellow bits in the middle of a forget-me-not are small scales in the mouth of the corolla, called fornices, that are typical in many plants in the Boraginaceae family; that those battered looking pussy willow catkins aren’t just wet, they are female flowers and they are on a separate tree because this is a dioecious plant; that the leaves on horsetails aren’t leaves at all, they are branches and the leaves are funny little scales – the only bit of the plant that doesn’t photosynthesise. 

Another little project I’ve started in these strange times, purely by chance, is my pebble journal. On a very ordinary beach walk in a very ordinary day at the beginning of March this year with my husband, we picked up a little bagful of pretty pebbles, not for any reason other than they were pretty. Then lockdown happened. I kept looking at these pebbles, in a little pile on the table, and they reminded me of the sea. So, I started drawing them, in a little journal of their own that I made with a light grey textured paper. One at a time, front and back, like a formal leaf study. Superficially, they look pretty, but on close inspection they are fascinating, mesmerising almost. I can get lost in their detail and trying to recreate their colours and textures with my pencils. This is such an engaging and mindful process, where all I want to do is savour the experience of drawing these pretty little things that remind me of that day on the shore…I can almost smell the sea. 

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Find more of Alison’s work on her website alisoncutts.com, view her folio here, and on join here on Instagram @dr.alison_botanical_artist.

Nature sketching as drawing practice

I was first introduced to green sketching by Ali Foxon - on one of her Boggy Doodle walks at Tegg’s nose in Macclesfield (UK). Although boggy that day, it was not.  It was an absolutely scorching day, week in fact; the ground was bone dry, the grass straw coloured, the sun was flattening every shadow, the hills looked exhausted in the haze and it was still the morning.  As we set out on the parched dusty path together, Ali explained with enthusiasm her vision to help people reconnect to nature through simple observation of natural details and sketching for pleasure. The beauty of doodling is that you do not have to be good, or draw something perfectly, far from it. Just observe closely, sketch and enjoy the process: you will be amazed at how intricate and varied nature is.

 Every now and again we stopped in the shade to draw hills, tree shadows, oak leaves, cow parsley, some simple grass with stunningly symmetrical features or delicate serrated leaves... It was a revelation to find everything so interesting.  It suddenly dawned on me that all that time looking to improve my drawing I had seen but not actually looked properly. I was always searching for the perfect view – you know, “it’s probably a bit further on”…-  as nothing seemed worth drawing “here”. But I had been wrong all along– quite the contrary, everything is worth drawing and paying close attention to. Suddenly there was everything to re-view, re-discover and properly appreciate. I love going for long walks, and being outside in general, I do enjoy nature immensely already, so I was immediately converted. That was 2018, sketchbook and pen have never left my pocket since.

I decided immediately to use nature sketching to advance my secret plan to become a better artist so chose to go further than just doodling, and work on improving my drawing and painting skills.  Daily practice is essential and the session with Ali taught me that I needed to become a more diligent observer, so use different aspects of nature sketching to practice different areas of drawing.  Starting with developing an eye for interesting composition using a view finder across a broad sweeping landscape and revealing hidden possibilities – using only line drawings you can practice focal points, shadows and tones.  You can try squares of different sizes or thin strips, looking for dynamic layouts. You see contrast better too that way.  I have recently purchased a couple of black ink brush pens to push myself to become bolder with shadows and strong contrasts - suddenly details in lighter areas jump out of the page and the dramatic angles of branches give new character to your drawing.

Flowers, leaves and plants help me develop an eye for details – I try to discipline myself to watch carefully first, looking for shapes and how they relate to each other.  This also helps with relative size and angles, and that is when you realise how intricate nature can be - and you can go further and further with the level of detail you want to achieve and challenge yourself.

Although outdoor direct observation is best, you can keep going and draw nature at home too. I love picking up treasures on my walks for close study later: shells, pebbles, seed heads, branches and lichens - the latter are mesmerising, so intricate, structured and colourful, complete worlds in miniature - but you need a magnifying glass or to take a closeup photo to truly appreciate it all.  Lichens also definitely deserve to be drawn in colour! 

Finally, I want to learn to draw light. When sketching outdoors I take a few watercolour pens to do a wash, but use paints to render sun, reflections and weather better. I love the dappled effects of the sun through tree canopies on the ground and Autumn leaves against dark skies. I do take a lot of photos of dramatic clouds or twinkling sunlight on water. These are fleeting and temporary effects I really want to get right as they set the mood, record a feeling or a season. On a walk you can slow down and appreciate time passing and enjoy change; from this summer I will try and make a habit of noting down these observations together with my sketches so that impressions, scents and sounds are also recorded. In fact I have been make a eagerly waiting for snow all winter - ready to record and re-discover its soft shapes in subtle colours and quiet stillness but wasn’t very lucky in that respect in my area this year!

As you can see, I have been bitten by the nature sketching bug. My kind of nature journaling is also an art journey, it provides me with a kaleidoscope of subjects and ideas I will brave all weather for. With so many opportunities literally right on our doorsteps, I hope that you too will realise that everything is worth drawing – just keep a pen and a small notebook in your pocket.

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You can find more of Laurence’s work on Instagram @laurencemenhinick.

Nature journaling in conjunction with photographic reference

I’ve always utilized life and field drawing for my wildlife art to varying degrees throughout the years, and always in conjunction with photographic reference. Photography has long been a faithful tool in my creative process, but when combined with the strong observations gleaned from nature journaling, makes for a masterful toolkit. Entering into 2020 I wanted to re-establish my love for this method with a goal in mind: to more consistently incorporate wildlife nature journaling into my studio practice. 

Journaling allows me to record observations quickly, with something as simple as a color swatch or a word, or with a more complex sketch or detailed rendering. Upon returning to my studio, these observations help to inform the emotional feel of my final artwork, the animal’s posture, its environmental composition and lighting, and so much more.

Some observations to record & bring back to the studio

These are some of the prompts I keep in mind when observing animals live:

Behavioral Observations:

• Movement:

  - Does it hop? Slither? Does it swoop down and up? Does it dart back and forth? 
  - Does it bob its head? Shake any feathers?

• Interactions: 

  - How do they interact with other species? Are they territorial? 
  - How do they interact with their young?
  - How do the different genders interact?

• Gestures & Posture

Smells of the Habitat

• Flowers/Grass?

• Wet/damp? like the smell before a rain or after?

• Soil/Earthy?

• Sweet and Fresh, or Foul and Acrid? 

Date, Time of Day & Season

• Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer

Sounds

• Animal’s Sound: Chirping? Chittering? Whistling? Screeching?

• Environmental Sounds: Windy? City noise? Other animals? Water noise?

Colors & Patterns

• Create swatches of the main colors observed: Highlights, shadows, reflective light/color, and Identifying colors 

• Record any distinctive markings or patterns as swatches

Weather

• Humidity: Damp / Sticky / Dry

• Rain: Misty / Light / Heavy / Thunder

• Wind: None / Light Breeze / Windy / Heavy Winds

• Temperature: Hot / Warm / Cool / Cold / Freezing

My Emotions/Feelings 

• Does it feel peaceful, quiet and serene?

• Does it feel chaotic, aggressive, or rough? 

What to do when you can’t get outside or the species is not in your hemisphere?

I have turned to nature and wildlife documentaries as source material when I am unable to access the species in real life. In a recent conversation with a friend, they recommended webcams as an option. This is a fabulous way to observe an animal’s day-to-day life. Many bird cams are set up for conservation research and can be viewed online. Trail cams and live cams at zoos and aquariums are another fabulous resource.

At the end of the day remember journaling isn’t about perfection, it’s about observation and learning. 
Go out and enjoy the sounds, smells and sights. Soak up as much as you can and enjoy the opportunity to connect with nature 😊

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Find more of Cat’s work on her website www.WildlifeByArtCat.com, as well as on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Art Cat has generously given us some free wildlife downloads which you can find on the Animals page.

Curious nature!

I have always loved nature. My name is Julia Landford and I was born and brought up in the beautiful country of Papua New Guinea – where I lived for around 20 years of my life, including with my husband Alan and three children. Some of my earliest memories as a child in PNG were looking at the incredible patterns on caladium leaves, watching brilliant tropical butterflies, raising colourful caterpillars and exploring trees, creeks, grasslands and gardens. The rest of my life has been in Australia – interspersed with fascinating experiences across many parts of the world. This has included several years with my international development career and diplomatic role in Bangkok, through to working in New York with the United Nations. 

I was also the Founding President of Wildlife and Botanical Artists (WABA) which provided a national network of artists interested in this genre for 20 years up to 2017. This was an opportunity to bring together artists, scientists and environmentalists, host many unique art exhibitions and workshops for artists, and led to the first national Symposium ‘Discover Wildlife – Art and Science’.  

In 2017 I decided to focus on the importance of nature in our lives by establishing a natural history art school called ‘NatureArt Lab’ based in Canberra, the capital city of Australia. NatureArt Lab has enabled me to share my joy of art and nature with hundreds of people, many of whom have not had the opportunity to stop and look a little more closely at the beauty of our natural world. Our programs cater for adults and children, and include nature art classes and tours to some of the most biodiverse places on the planet.

One of the main reasons I see this as important is that the more people can connect with nature, the more likely they are to become ambassadors for nature - and the more likely they are to protect and ensure its survival in a rapidly changing world with major biodiversity challenges. I received the ‘Environmental Educator of the Year’ Award last year from the Australian Association of Environmental Education (ACT) in recognition of my work with art and nature.

I’ve always loved drawing and observation, and over the years I have ventured into learning about almost every artistic medium to recreate my fascination with the natural world. My passion for nature and art has resulted in artworks of insects and frogs to birds and mammals, as well as works of a range of botanical beauties.

Nature journaling is one of my favourite things. I love being able to spend time walking in nature, and I love being able to occasionally stop and take a closer look at the intricacies of fungi, the colour of leaves and grasses, the incredible lighting of late afternoon or early morning sunlight. I have a small field kit with a selection of pens, pencils and a tiny little watercolour set – as well as my nature journal. These simple tools enable me to document anything from the little coral fungi which has emerged from the forest floor, to the beauty of the coastal Westringia plants growing on the cliffsides of the Pacific Ocean. I have documented the small beetles found foraging in our garden, and the pasture moths emerging in their hundreds in nearby fields. 

Teaching nature journaling is also one of my most satisfying roles at our natural history art school. I have seen the transformative changes when people pick up a pencil or pen to draw what they see in nature, suddenly realizing it really is not that difficult. The joy of being able to explore the colours, patterns and shapes of nature whilst creating space for curiosity is so rewarding.   

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You can find out more about Julia’s work at NatureArt Lab on her website natureartlab.com.au and on Instagram @natureart_lab.

The joy of curiosity in my nature journal

My name is Fiona and I am 16 years old. I am not necessarily what you might call your “typical teenager.” I do not watch TV and I rarely use a computer, except under these recent circumstances where I have to use one for school. I just recently got a cell phone, much to my chagrin, and I only use it to text friends concerning homework and such. (Also, since I have had to shelter in place, I have been using it to stay in touch with friends.) Otherwise, I leave my phone at home and do not take it with me anywhere. I have no social media accounts, and don’t want any. Instead of getting lost in the overwhelming world of social media, I prefer to get lost in the overwhelmingly amazing world of nature.

One of my great loves besides nature is art. I have loved drawing ever since I could hold a pencil. I also really love nature, and it has always been a big part of my life. Since I was 3 years old, I have attended Waldorf schools, where art and nature are an integral part of the curriculum. My family is blessed to live in Northern California near a river canyon, with hundreds of miles of open space and wild trails right out our back door. I feel so lucky to be surrounded by nature, and I felt welcomed into it from a very early age.

On the day before I turned 13, I had the good fortune of a chance meeting with artist, naturalist, author, and educator John Muir Laws (aka “Jack”), and that moment completely changed my life. Through Jack, I learned about nature journaling, which is this amazing combination of two things I love that go great together: art and nature. Jack and I became friends and sketching buddies, and we have had lots of fun nature experiences together. I love exploring nature with Jack because he is so joyful about the world and that joy is contagious. He is excited about everything, like a child who is seeing it for the first time and is amazed by it. It is so fun to go out and journal with him.

Now, nearly 4 years and 2000 nature journal pages later, nature journaling is an integral part of my life. Not only has it changed the way I look at nature, it has also changed the way I look at life in general.

Nature journaling helps me connect more deeply with nature. Through the pages of my journal, I can explore and express the wonders and the beauties of nature. It is incredibly important to stay connected to nature because being in nature makes me feel so calm and so happy—I feel so lucky to be alive when I am out in the world, looking at all the intricacies and mysteries that nature has to offer.

Nature is also such an incredible resource—there is so much to wonder about, so much to see, and so much to stand in awe of. There is so much beauty in the world if we stop to look…if we stop and smell the flowers, and draw the flowers while we are at it. 

Not only is nature amazing, it is also our life source. All of these phenomena, all of these mysteries make up this beautiful web that is allowing us to live, and understating that is a really key part of being alive on this planet. 

Perhaps the biggest lesson nature journaling has taught me is the joy of curiosity. When I am nature journaling, I slow down enough to wonder, to realize all the things I don’t know, and this ignites my curiosity. Research shows that when we are curious, our minds are primed to learn and remember more. I love to ask questions in my journal, and the more detail I see and document, the more questions I have. As David Allen Sibley wrote in his foreword to Jack’s book, The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds: “When I am drawing, I look more closely and ask and answer questions that I would not have considered if I was just watching.”

Questions are intrinsically good in themselves because they pull me into a state of heightened awareness and focus. Research shows that curiosity is one of the precursors of moving into a flow state. (A flow state is what many people call their “happy place,” where you get so engrossed in what you are doing that you lose track of time.) This flow state triggers a mix of potent neurotransmitters in my brain, while at the same time, reducing blood flow to the part of my brain that houses my inner critic, helping to mute it. (Muting the self-critic is especially important to me because my self-critic is a huge negative part of my life.) Curiosity is a dopamine-mediated response, meaning that my brain gets a squirt of dopamine when I get curious, so curiosity literally feels good.

Asking questions is fun, and because I don’t worry about the answers at the moment, it’s very freeing. If I had to answer all the questions I ask in my journal, it would paralyze me. I’m not saying that answers are not important—just that the act of asking questions helps me go deeper into the mystery. I start with basic questions, and then those questions lead to more interesting questions. In fact, the best questions often come after many simple ones. This is what I call question chains—a series of questions, starting with simple ones and getting more complex, each new question building on the last. In fact, often without even being answered, these questions will take me into a thought process and investigation that I would not reach otherwise. If I do decide to go look something up, I don’t just stop when I get the answer to the question, I let it spark another question.

Sadly, it seems that many people in our society are afraid of questions. When we were small children, we asked lots of questions. But at some point, we stopped. In fact, a lot of people, teenagers and adults alike, are afraid to ask questions. Why? Perhaps we don’t want to look stupid, or we don’t want anyone to know that we don’t know all the answers. I have found that building the skill of curiosity in the safety of my own nature journal has given me the opportunity to practice asking lots of questions concerning other topics, and the courage to do it more and more. Getting curious in my nature journal has enabled and empowered me to look beyond my journal and question everything around me.

I think, now, in this moment in our world’s history, asking questions is vital to our survival. If we, as humans, accept and embrace questions, we will be able to see where we are heading as a planet and take steps to change that path. One of the best questions I have ever heard came from a Mary Oliver poem, “The Summer Day”: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I now know my answer: I want to spend my life observing, wondering about, and standing in awe of nature and all it has to offer. But the awe is only the beginning: I want to spend my life taking care of nature and fighting to protect it. In order to do this, I will be carefully observing the natural world, writing and drawing a lot in my journal, and asking lots of questions.

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Explore Fiona’s website at www.fionasongbird.com/naturalist.html.

Small weather sketches - A great way to start a new sketchbook

One ongoing project I started over a year ago is to document the sky above me on a regular basis. I love gazing into the sky, and I like learning about different weather phenomena by quickly sketching them in graphite and watercolor.

The way I do these sketches is to reserve the first page of my sketchbook for small weather sketches. These are intended to be small thumbnails drawings, just impressions on how the weather looked like on that particular day. This technique has become my favorite way to start a new sketchbook, and I'll tell you why in a second. I keep these sketches really simple: I usually make a few notes (date, time, what's happening). Making a small weather study is a great way to warm up, and I often start my sketching sessions with weather sketches.

This way I fill up the first page bit by bit and I document the weather and sky that I saw when I was using the sketchbook. When I run out of place on the first page, I continue on the last page. This practice gives a wonderful insight on how the sky looks in different seasons, and what colors and weather conditions dominated that time span. Winter light is different from summer light, as you can learn from this kind of perpetual journaling. Weather sketches also train my ability to paint different kind of skies and clouds, which is always helpful, and gives me an excuse to nerd out about clouds.

But the most valuable aspect these small sketches at the beginning of my sketchbook have, is that they take away the fear of having to make a mark into a new sketchbook. I used to be afraid of my sketchbook, especially a new one, because the empty pages felt intimidating, and I didn't want to screw them up. I'm pretty sure this is a feeling every artist has known at one point or another, so there are many great ways to trick yourself around that fear. Nature journaling has definitely helped to liberate me from the perfectionist approach of making great art all the time, but I still felt a bit intimidated at the beginning of a new, pristine sketchbook - so full of potential, but also potentially ruined by my first brushstroke. Since I've decided that the first page of my nature journal will always be reserved for small weather sketches, this fear has vanished. I don't even think about what kind of marks I want to make in a new sketchbook, I simply start and document the sky.

Next time you start a new sketchbook, try out this technique. Obviously you don't have to fill the page with weather sketches, but I find them easy to start with. They work with the simplest of tools - graphite, ink, or watercolor, and the process warms up your drawing hand and familiarizes you with your tools. I typically spend around 5 minutes on one sketch.

Weather sketches are usually not very technically challenging - you lay down a blue or grey sky, and then react to whatever cloud pattern or weather phenomenon you can see. Clouds are very forgiving subjects, they don't have to follow exact forms, and with a few simple tricks you can learn how to paint them pretty easily.

As a small demo, I'd like to show you how to paint two different types of clouds in watercolor. This video will be added to the SKIES page on 6th June 2020.

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Julia shares regular updates of her adventures in nature and lots of sketching tips on her blog - juliabausenhardt.com/blog and Youtube channel, and she teaches nature sketching classes online which you can find here.