Sketching trees

A collage of the month’s urban tree sketches

In this sketch you can see some of the line of lime trees that were cut down before protests successfully resulted in s suspension of felling.

I’ve been sketching trees as part of my daily sketches and as an urban sketcher for the last ten years. They are often part of a scene in local parks or in street scenes. I’m lucky enough to live in a town with lots of parks, pocket parks and green spaces. As well as this there’s a town organisation dedicated to protecting and developing street trees.

In the spring of this year, suddenly, I began to look more intensely at trees that were actually or potentially under threat. Over a matter of days a group of historic and loved local trees were threatened by development and some cut down before protests temporarily halted the work, many trees in the centre of Plymouth were chopped down overnight and a significant tree in a London street was also lost to development.

In this sketch a very well-established local street tree sits in the pavement very close to a main road.

This led me to make trees the focus of my daily sketching from 1st March 2023. Each day I sketched one or more trees mainly around Northampton and Wellingborough. I began to feel that many trees are in vulnerable positions in the streets, in the gardens and in the grounds of public organisations or private gardens. It makes me wonder who is looking after these trees and question if we, the public, need to be paying more attention to the trees around us. One of the ways I pay attention myself and draw the attention of others is to sketch and share my sketches on social media.

In this sketch you can see my trusty Blackwing Matte pencil, my Faber Castell Polychromos red pencil and my small pencil sharpener. These along with a small sketchbook were my sketching kit for the month.

Each sketch was made outside from direct observation often standing up or occasionally through a window or from my car. I used a red and  a Blackwing graphite pencil for these daily sketches and I worked into an A6 or A5 hardback sketchbook.

In this sketch the trees are on a roundabout surrounded by cars and traffic lights.

As I sketched over the month I varied the use of the red pencil sometimes using red for the tree in the scene and at other times using red for  the context around the tree. Although I’m not now sketching urban trees daily this is still part of my sketching routine and when a tree in public catches my attention I make a mental note to sketch it.

As I sketched the vulnerability of the tree sometimes became more apparent to me - surrounded by paving stones, tarmac, street furniture and other human intrusions.

Several of the sketches have been bought for donations to Save Our Street Trees, Northampton and one was donated to an auction to raise funds for the legal action to save the Wellingborough Walks trees.

In this sketch you can see one of the avenues of limes in Wellingborough that were and still are under threat. I repeated this sketch later in the month and donated it to be auctioned for the campaign to save the trees.

About Jean

Blog: https://jeanadrawingaday.com/

Instagram: @70jeanne

Twitter: @JeanEd70

Short biography:

I am an urban sketcher, printmaker and collage artist living in Northampton, UK. I have maintained a daily drawing habit since 4th August, 2012 and these are posted on my blog. I often sketch the environment around me and I’m drawn to trees especially in the winter. I’m also a former primary school teacher and an art educator supporting people who teach art in schools.

Blog: https://jeanadrawingaday.com/

Instagram: @70jeanne

Twitter: @JeanEd70

Nature Journal - Day 127 (7th May)

Did you know we are just over one third of the way through 2023? I know that as I decided to do a nature journal page every day throughout 2023.

My day job is a teacher of complex needs - I’m an Outdoor Learning specialist and then I also run a social enterprise - specialising in using nature to reconnect people to themselves and others. Up until last week - I have been working six days a week, plus schoolwork in the evenings and weekends. I am fortunate, I know, that a good chunk of that time I am outdoors. 

I work with a lot of people - children and adults alike - helping them with their self-esteem, confidence and mental health - through nature. I don’t mean to be selfish, but the nature journaling is for me - it’s my time. My time to reconnect and recharge, it’s for my mindfulness and creativity. 

A bit about me.

When I was a kid, we lived a couple of hours away from The Lake District. From a very young age I have had a connection with nature. Later on, as a teen I became interested in photography and got into landscape photography - this led me on to my first career in photography - moving to London at 18. To cut a long story short I’ve ended up living in Scotland and using the Forest Schools model though my day job and social enterprise. I’ve dabbled in landscape photography, reduction linocut, eco-print and now watercolour. I have done a bit of nature journaling during lockdown and followed the work of John Muir Laws. I don’t consider myself to be an artist, I just love being out in nature, it’s been my friend and teacher – it’s where I find peace and joy.

My nature journaling.

I have set myself a few rules. I generally need to find something that day. I don’t like using a picture from a previous day as somehow the emotional connection starts to get lost, and I cannot paint it as well. I don’t have an agenda when I go out for a walk/trip. I’m totally open to whatever nature wants to show me – I then try to capture it on my phone - then at home on paper.  After a day or two, the magic of that moment has passed, I’ll not remember the sensory experience of that moment. I may take a video as I find the noise of the wind, bird song, buzzing of a bee helps me refocus on that moment. I take a lot of photos of the ‘thing’ so I’m satisfied that I have enough to adequately capture the form, shadow, colour and light balance when back home. 

Equipment wise, I tend to use four brushes, two thicker ones for blocking in backgrounds and then a smallish one for more detailed work/creating shadows, and a fine one for lines, edges etc. Paints wise, I started off from a set my partner bought me from Lidl’s. I am slowly replacing these with Winsor & Newton as I go on. I’ll need to replace some yellows soon as I use this with the sap green to get the greens for landscapes. I need to get a non-photo blue pencil, currently I am just using a normal HB pencil, which would show up if I copied my work. I use a Chengzi folding plastic watercolour palette and Moleskine Watercolour notebooks, both A5 and A4. Books wise I collected quite a few over the years, my favourites, and those I dip into daily, are ‘The Almanac’ and ‘The Foragers Calendar’.

I don’t always draw exactly what was in the photo- I may leave details out either to make it easier to draw the ‘thing’ or to simplify the shot. Like plants - I tend to zoom in - I find the detail and beauty is shown when one looks really closely. 

Sometimes the picture/drawing/art - works, I get the colours and shading bang on. Sometimes it doesn’t work, whether I was tired, not as focused, stressed about work, - but that just doesn’t matter. The point is - I’ve captured a memory of that moment, that place, that thing. Nobody else saw what I saw, what I felt, smelt, touched or tasted.

In that moment - that was my experience, my connection to nature. For me nature journaling is very personal – yes, the whole world sees it on Facebook, and I hope people get inspiration from the daily drawings/paintings – but ultimately, it’s about me and me becoming close to nature. Since doing this daily, I have become massively more in tune with the changing seasons. The gradual change from winter to spring, noticing the detail; changes in daylight, the joy of seeing colour, hearing increasing bird song, trees showing their buds. Before I would have walked past, not noticed, but by doing a daily nature journal, I have noticed, I am much more in tune. I feel the sense of community in the wildlife and nature – not just a human passing by, but a much deeper connection to individual trees, landscapes, plants, birds, insects, skies etc. etc.

I live in the Scottish Borders. It’s a beautiful part of the world. This afternoon I went for a run/trot/walk on one of my favourite routes.

I love the Beech trees, especially how they shimmer in the sunshine. Silvery hands holding across a sea blue sky – connecting, reaching, stretching.

Future Blogs

I am aiming to write about the ‘thing’ that I have seen that day (as I journey through May/June) – the story/emotional connection as to why I chose it – or more to the point, why it chose me. Where I was and what I was doing at the time. How I’ve gone about drawing/painting. Difficulties I experienced when drawing/painting, what I feel about it. etc. Words and phrases that come to mind describing the sensory experience, what nature was saying to me at the time.

About Pete

Pete posts daily on the following Facebook pages:

International Nature Journaling Week

The Nature Journal Club

UK Nature Journaling

The Nova Nature Journal Club.

He also has his own Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/PCarthyNatureInspired /

Pete says ‘Come and say hi, it’s great to chat to fellow nature journalers’.

A Closer Look • A Deeper Listen - Finding the Nature that is Right There

The cheeping couldn’t be ignored. What kind of juvenile songbird was it? Precisely from where was it coming? The questions jumped from my awareness and into my curiosity. I had to go look.

A few years before, I never would have heard the cheeping. I certainly wouldn’t have been walking around this abandoned parking lot looking for it.

Finding Nature Right Where You Are

There are times in our lives when we don’t notice nature unless we happen to be right in the middle of some place new and beautiful. Whether we are preoccupied with work or worries, are hurried or harried, or have placed our surroundings into the subconscious categories of “boring” or “normal,” we fail to see the richness in nature that goes on all the time. Our desire to see nature can be lost behind a shroud of dulled perspective.

What I have found from my daily nature photo walks that began eight years ago, though, is that when we place ourselves in a mindset to look and see, suddenly the whole world opens up with its intricacies and cycles. Things that were never evident before can’t be ignored. Curiosity explodes, questions come in a flurry, wonder blooms, and connection is formed with the world around us. We learn about the cycles of specific trees during the season; we grow to care more about the environment; we begin to recognize different species.

But sometimes when we think about what we want to draw or photograph, we end up perplexed. Nothing jumps out as interesting enough to notice or to take the time to draw.

I don’t know in what part of the world you live or your perspective on the nature around you. But, to reignite my own curiosity and put recent experience to the words I’m writing, I set out on a challenge. I went to an empty parking lot in an abandoned part of a former shopping mall and sought out nature.

I was amazed at what I found.

A Closer Look

At first, all I could see was cracked pavement, weeds, and overgrown dividers in the parking lot. ) But there is something I apply in my photography and it definitely helped me on this day: I call it prepositional seeing. Instead of just looking at the weeds around me, I looked over, through, under, in. In so doing, I also looked at them closely. Suddenly, a weed transformed into green leaves with purple-pink edges, and their shapes were not only twisted as if dancing, but the edges were inconsistent. I noticed along the edge of the leaves there were little thorns, and as the sun shone upon them fascinating shadows were cast. The play of color and form and texture was so intriguing. Questions sprang up into my mind – were those the actual shapes of the leaves or had they been formed by insects eating them? If formed by insects, then did the purplish edge happen in response? Or is that the original shape and coloration of the leaves?

This happened again and again, and suddenly I wasn’t in a barren parking lot but in a whole environment to be explored. The overgrown grasses had gone to seed and their swaying in the breeze was beautiful. The cracks in the curb were no longer visible when I looked closely at the color and texture of a pine-like bush.

Then, I started noticing something else…

A Deeper Listen

This happens to me all the time now. When I get into that place where my concerns and the troubles in the world are silenced because of my hyper focus on what I’m seeing, the acuity of my hearing increases. In fact, I’ve come to realize:

The more you see, the more you hear.

The more you hear, the more you listen.

The more you listen, the more you see.

…and so it continues…

Susanne Swing Thompson

It happened on this day as well. The more I looked, the more I heard, and off in the distance was that cheeping. I followed the sound and wandered over to an area with a tree, several overgrown bushes, signage that had been dumped on the ground, and debris from seasons of leaves falling and weeds growing.  I looked and I listened.

There was a Mockingbird in the branches of the tree. The Mockingbird was an adult, but it watched from a distance what soon caught my eye: the branches in one of the bushes were moving. It was from there that the cheeping came. Walking around, bending down, I finally caught sight of the juvenile Mockingbird that was making its plaintive cheeping sound.

What a delight it was to get to watch as I sat there and photographed: once the adult ventured into the branches for its young one. Other times, the juvenile sought food on its own. Calls from the young one’s sibling sent it flying awkwardly to another bush. Sometimes it hid deep in the branches; other times it ventured out just a little.

The “seeing” continued as I sat there and watched. I began to notice the bees pollinating the flowers on the bushes, and the Fritillary Butterfly seeking nectar. A place that had been ugly was now coming beautifully alive.

While walking home, I reflected: life longs to flourish. Nature does everything within its adaptive power to do so. What a beautiful opportunity to see the interplay of nature once again: experiencing it in being present, looking at the details through my lens; and interacting with it as I created in my nature journal. The parking lot hasn’t changed, but my perspective has.

About Susanne

Susanne Swing Thompson lives in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. In the past few years she has taken up photography and writing full time, and she greatly enjoys nature journaling in pen and watercolor. She sends a free weekly nature email called “A Closer Look,” which is simply one of her nature photos and a short bit of original writing.

You can see more of Susanne’s work here:

www.wren-photos.com (and you can subscribe to A Closer Look on the Contact page)

Instagram: @wren_nature_photos

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/Wrennaturephotos

Confessions of a (Recovering) Neurotic Naturalist

Chasing a Feeling

I scramble toward solid ground, tripping over fallen branches onto the elk path leading deeper into the woods. Cottonwood fragrance fills the air and songs of robins, Pacific wrens, and woodpeckers produce a delightful spring cacophony. I take another step and a dull ‘plop’ alerts me to a large adult red-legged frog fleeing my boot. They don’t make another move and I recognize my opportunity. For a moment I hesitate. Frogs are a challenging subject for me and I worry about ‘messing up’ or ‘doing it wrong’. Reminding myself that it’s the depth of observation I bring to this little creature and not the outcome on paper that matters to me I take a deep breath, perch on a dry branch out of the mud, and begin blocking in the shape on my page with my pencil. My first hesitant sketch doesn’t look quite like my subject, but I can feel myself tuning in and calming down. That awkward sacrificial pancake paves the way path to the next sketch. I start another sketch of the frog, this time paying closer attention to my subject who sits patiently on the ground next to me. I can tell they’re aware of me but for the moment we have a tentative truce. “I won’t bother you,” I promise. “I just want to do your portrait.” The frog shifts slightly at the sound of my voice but doesn’t leap away.          

Within a few minutes I’m through with my careful contour sketch and feel satisfied with it. I could stop now and move on, but wouldn’t it be even better to record color notes of this frog? A new fear seizes me: should I add watercolor? I’ve gotten to where I usually feel reasonably confident with my pencil drawings, but my watercolor skill hasn’t kept pace, mostly because I allow my fear to get the better of me. I worry that I’ll ruin an otherwise ‘acceptable’ drawing and easily become paralyzed by apprehension. I take a moment to acknowledge that feeling but making a conscious decision not to let it to overwhelm me, reminding myself that the key to improving my watercolor is to get more Brush Miles in and that the goal of my journaling is not to produce pretty pictures but to notice more, observe more deeply, and experience more richly.

I pull my watercolor palette from my field bag and pull my paint sock onto my wrist. I begin to paint, beginning with shadows and gradually building up colors and values. Slowly, I feel something in my experience shift. As I pull my brush across the paper, my eyes flitting from the frog to my sketch and back again, the details of my environment begin to crystallize. I feel the gentle buzz of enjoyment and wellbeing wash over me and a thought spontaneously occurs to me that, “This is the good stuff!” In this moment the image on paper is only a bonus. I’m observing in a way that eclipses simply “looking” at a frog. This convergence of attention, curiosity, and total absorption in the moment—this is why I nature journal!

The Scenic Route

Growing up I’d always been interested in art and nature but it took me a long time to figure out how to combine them. As a kid I wanted to be an animator for feature films but ignored the advice of professionals to draw from life. Mostly I liked to trace and copy cartoons for fun and I liked it when grown-ups told me my art was Good. I quickly learned that people generally only saw drawing as worthwhile if the results could be judged as Good, and being Good At Art became very important to me. The problem was that the road to Good is a long trek through learning and hours of practice and almost requires a dedication to making art for its own sake. This obsession with perfection and making Good Art (whatever that means) would hound me for years, but I eventually I did learn to balance the creative impulse that drives me to keep sketchbooks with the inner gremlin that tries to convince me my work isn’t good enough. It seems like life was going to keep presenting me with opportunities to learn this lesson no matter how long it took or how I stubborn I chose to be!

At age nine I announced to my daycare teacher that I wanted to take nature notes like my idols in National Geographic did. She handed me a pencil and paper and led me to the edge of the daycare playground where I faced an impenetrable wall of English ivy. A couple furtive, skittish birds skulked in the shadows. This was nothing like the clear views of wildlife I enjoyed in nature documentaries! I was automatically overwhelmed and lost my nerve, not sure where to even begin. In elementary school we were given little notebooks and encouraged to go out and explore with them. I checked out a book about pill bugs from the school library and examined living specimens under logs but was totally petrified when it came to recording notes about them. What was my page supposed to look like? How did I know if I was doing it right? I hid that notebook under the couch and tried to forget about it.

I wouldn’t revisit nature journaling till I was fourteen. I was deep into a preoccupation with sub-Saharan Africa and had my mind made up to be a game ranger in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. I even had a map of South Africa posted above my bed! There was just one problem. I didn’t know the first thing about South Africa’s native plants or birds, I’d never seen a reedbuck, and couldn’t tell spoor from pugmarks. Then it occurred to me: why didn’t I practice on the local environment? Surely if I became knowledgeable about Pacific northwest natural history it would be a transferable skill and I could pick up bushveld natural history no problem. At some point while concocting this genius plan I came across an image of biologist George Schaller’s field notes from his studies of Serengeti lions in the 1960s. The notes were meticulous, handwritten in small tidy script on quad-ruled paper. For some reason this photograph gripped my imagination and lit a fire in my belly.

Something about it made sense to me and the very next day I marched to the store and bought a graph notebook and began keeping a nature journal. I kept notes made in the field in an old reporter’s notebook, eventually upgrading to a series of waterproof journals that could withstand Pacific northwest downpours and dunks in wetland mud. The freedom of the field books, which I felt safe letting be scribbly affairs, allowed me to record unselfconsciously. At my desk back at home I would stitch a story together in my journal from my field notebook. This worked well for me through my teen years. I fell so deeply in love with the cottonwood river bottoms and northwest bird songs of my neighborhood that I eventually discarded my game ranger ambitions and began focusing entirely on my local bioregion.

But my nature journal system could be frustrating and fussy. It was time-consuming and impractical to essentially journal twice for each experience. Sometimes it felt as though something was lost in translation between the event and the recording. And I missed out on the breathless exuberance of my field notes in my “finished” journal entries. Perhaps most painfully I eventually acknowledged that I was using the writing-only format to avoid drawing, which still scared me. I was captivated by Clare Walker Leslie’s book Keeping a Nature Journal and the loose, fearless approach she took in her own sketchbooks. Maybe that was something I could do? I occasionally sketched in my journals, but was afraid to go as big and bold as Leslie seemed to do so effortlessly. I stuck with my imperfect system longer than I should have, muscling through the friction I felt but not ready to make the leap to unlined paper and a focus on drawing.

In my early twenties I dispensed with the quad notebooks altogether, that collection of journals discarded one morning in a spasm of dread, casualties of my neurotic habit of throwing things away when I feel overcome by anxiety or indecision. Maybe I just wanted to wipe the slate clean. Still, many of the discoveries I had catalogued in those early journals remain clear and vivid to me, a testament to the power of journaling to support memory. For a number of years, busy with a demanding AmeriCorps I stuck to my scribbly field notebooks, stream-of-consciousness recordings of my experiences and observations exploring Seattle greenspaces and beaches at all hours on my bike. These were very intense, almost transcendental experiences – some nights, long after dark on some cobbly beach, I would look up and realize I was accompanied by racoons, or find myself at sunrise on a bluff overlooking Elliot Bay morning fog obscuring the city skyline so that I felt as if I had slipped through a wormhole to a precolonial time.  

After a few years of haphazard nature-notebooking I eventually gave that up too. I still kept personal sketchbooks. I sketched people covertly on my long bus commutes, attended figure drawing classes, dabbled in urban sketching, and liked to draw cartoons about my life, but I avoided nature journaling out of feelings of inadequacy. Around this time, I discovered a copy of the Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling and was enthralled by it. The first time I leafed through those pages I found tears welling up in my eyes. Jack seemed to feel the same way about nature that I did, and he was actually doing something about it! He wrote with such tenderness and reverence, and while I felt intimidated by the skill evident in his drawings, his friendly approach was encouraging. I kept a procession of unfinished nature journals in the following years, always abandoning them before they were completed. Eventually mental and physical health challenges derailed these efforts and I paused nature journaling. But I always felt a quiet desire to return to the practice, and even privately promised myself that one day, when I felt ready, I would pick up a journal and try again.

The Breakthrough

Like many of us who rekindled abandoned or neglected hobbies during the yawning chunks of time presented by the COVID-19 lockdowns, I revisited nature journaling, this time in earnest, at the beginning of 2020. I had been hemming and hawing about giving it another go, my inner gremlin dragging me down with such unhelpful contributions as “if you couldn’t stick with it before, what makes you think you will this it this time around?” But something changed when I stumbled across Marley Peiffer’s Unlock Your Potential video. I started watching it on a morning I’d already well overslept, newly laid-off, feeling stuck and inert. Just a few minutes in and I was riveted. I started scrawling notes in my pajamas. Learning about the concept of growth mindset initiated a cognitive shift, and it’s the reason I started nature journaling again and have stuck with it for the last two years (take that, gremlin!).

I realized that this practice could be a haven from my perceived need for perfection. I didn’t have to share my journal pages with anyone if I didn’t want to. I could make sloppy, messy pages, and it was just fine. I could work painstakingly on a journal entry if I wanted, or dash four pages’ worth of notes in a few short minutes if I chose. Everything I did in my journal was great, and if I didn’t like something I wrote or drew I could simply turn the page and start a new one. I tossed that unhelpful standard of making Good Drawings I’d been schlepping around since childhood and instead focused on making lots of drawings, and then lots more drawings. If I felt discouraged about a drawing I took some of John Muir Laws’ advice and turned it into a diagram. I decided to measure the success of my drawings not by aesthetic prettiness but by whether I recorded something interesting, noticed something new, or enriched my experience in nature. Most importantly, I was having the time of my life! I couldn’t get enough.

I realized with delight one day while sketching complicated leaf shapes that awkward ‘first-attempt’ drawings are tangible records of your brain grappling with something new and challenging. The next drawing is a little better. This one after that, a bit better than before. The very next might be a total flop, as I tried a different approach or forced myself to draw less deliberately and more boldly. But eventually, with repeated practice and persistence, I would get closer to describing what I saw with greater accuracy, with the bonus that by the end of the process I knew my subject much better than I ever would have had I simply plucked a leaf and inspected it without taking written or visual notes.

I was intimidated by drawing birds, who seemed to know just when I started to sketch them and would fly away the minute I looked down at my paper. But I practiced deliberately, studying references at home and watching John Muir Laws videos when the weather was terrible. Just when I started to feel confident about my quick-draw bird sketching capabilities, a pair of black-tailed deer wandered into my backyard and as I scrawled sketches in my journal I realized that I did not have a very good foundational knowledge of drawing ungulates. I started studying deer and elk skeletons, muscles, poses, and even the details of dead elk my dog Niko and I found in the woods near our home. I copied Bill Berry’s caribou drawings to get inside his head and really learn how to construct the forms of these animals. Now I feel a lot more confident quickly sketching elk I see around my home, worrying not so much about the drawing part but focusing on recording my observations faithfully.

In the first couple years of this process I would often find myself exhausted and discouraged at some point by a perceived lack of progress. I would need to take an extended break of a couple weeks up to even a few months from my journaling. I would feel ashamed of my perceived failure but after experiencing a few cycles of this phenomenon I realized that creativity seems to work like a muscle. If you want a stronger muscle you have to push that muscle to perform beyond its current ability, but you can’t keep working out the muscle without a break or you’ll injure yourself. You have to let that sore muscle heal from the stress of the exercise by giving it lots of rest, fuel, stretches and active recovery. With nature journaling or any other kind of creative skill building, the principles are the same.

I might spend a lot of time for a couple weeks intensively practicing drawing elk or insects, but eventually I’ll exhaust my brain’s capacity for practice. Now when I feel tapped-out I take a break. I draw something else, write in my journal, or do lower-effort journal entries. If my hand and brain simply refuse to cooperate I find other ways to engage my brain. I go on walks with my dog, take naps, read, watch movies or play video games, or study other artists’ work for inspiration. Without fail, after a few days that little creative imp starts to nudge me back to my journal, and I find that when I return to my challenging subject, I have a better handle on it than I did before.

This approach to nature journaling totally changed my relationship with art and creativity. Rather than being an agonizing experience of feeling like a failure and giving up, it’s a joyful, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately always rewarding experience. Rather than fall into the “pretty picture” trap and beat myself up about my performance, I focus on the pleasure of being outdoors and the gratitude I feel for the opportunity to observe and experience and discover for myself with my journal as my mentor.

Your Turn!

My journey to nature journaling has been a bumpy and nonlinear one. Susceptible to self-doubt and prone to frustration, there were many times I wanted to throw in the towel, but a tiny ember of that creative impulse never let me really give it up, no matter how discouraged I felt. I hope that if you’re struggling with your nature journal practice, whether it’s been a long time since you’ve even cracked the spine on your journal and you’re feeling guilty or negative about the experience, feel stuck in a rut, or if you’ve always wanted to try but you’re terrified of messing up or doing it wrong, you’re willing to give it just one more shot. And then another one after that. Each new page is a new opportunity and I hope you take every one.

About the Author

Sawnch was born in Seattle and grew up all over the Puget-Willamette Lowlands Bioregion. These days I live in Packwood, Washington and love exploring my environment with binoculars and trusty nature journal kit by my side. If you would like to get in touch with Sawnch, you can email: okinokee@gmail.com.

An Experimental Nature

My initial thoughts about nature journaling were probably typical… a notebook or sketchbook filled with drawings and jottings about flora and fauna, neatly labelled, dated and symbols indicating weather conditions. Thanks to initiatives like International Nature Journaling Week and the word ‘greensketching’ coming to the fore as, post-pandemic, we all become more aware of the benefits whilst connecting with nature, I now have a much broader view of what nature journaling can be.

I am coming to nature journaling as an artist who loves experimenting with a variety of art materials. I create work that veers from reasonably accurate to messy and sometimes abstracted. Working directly from nature I find great pleasure in drawing the plants in my garden and our three-quarter acre field beyond. I enjoy focusing on the shapes, relating one aspect to another, the negative shapes, textures, details, colour, and then how to capture some of this through drawing.

Let’s look at a few pages and introduce some ideas you might find interesting and like to try…

Simple Line Drawings (Daffodil)

A double page spread. In one hand a humble graphite pencil and in the other a bright yellow daffodil. The pencil lines are a little hesitant, stop and start, exploring the shapes of the trumpet and open petals. Double check, how many petals? I add some shading with hatched lines, and a few details. A flower still closed catches my eye, the papery bract evident, and that joins the page. Pausing, the ‘tightness’ of the drawing encourage me to go on… I want daffodils that express more looseness, that say something about the joyfulness of this Spring flower. I scribble across the middle of the sketchbook lightly with yellow and green water mixable crayons. A swish of water and the pigments dissolve. Once dry, more lines in pencil to describe the flowers. I work quickly and, now familiar with the shapes, this creates more energy. There is a slight calligraphic quality as I increase or decrease the pressure on the pencil mark. A few more buds cluster onto the opposite page. Another change in angle for a final flower, sketchy and with a little shading. I stop, happy to have a drawn record of these daffodils on the Meteorological First Day of Spring.

 Art Tips: 

1.      Add colour to the page before drawing and create another layer of interest.                             

2.      Hold the pencil further away from the tip and try changing the speed you make marks and lines – how does it change the quality? Which do you prefer?

Simple Layered Drawings (Dog Rose)

It is warm and sunny. I am sitting in my little field on a fold up stool, an A3 board on my lap. It is June 2020 and the very first International Nature journaling Week! An A3 sheet of cartridge paper has been folded into a concertina. I have cut a sprig of Dog Rose, a wild hedge plant that scrambles through the trees and bushes of the old hedge line. It is a magnificent sight every year. The sun is on my back and casts strong shadows on the white paper. Grabbing a pencil I trace around those plant shadows, changing the angle of the flower and leaves periodically. Sometimes the shadows are strangely elongated or the tracing very odd as the gentle breeze alters the shadow positions.

I have my watercolour paintbox nearby and a waterbrush. Ignoring the initial drawing I create simple washes of colour in the shape of the flower petals and leaves directly over the top. The final result could be seen as a bit of a mess by some, but I am satisfied. Overlapping the two simple stages has formed a more complex web of lines and colours than in isolation. For me, it conveys the habit of this Dog Rose, how it uses other structures to clamber through on its spreading journey.

Art Tips:

1.      Try shadow drawing. No expectations as to how it will look. If there’s a breeze either pause until the shadows resume their place or let your pencil dance and follow!

2.      Change media and draw further views of your subject on the top. Ignore what is beneath, let both layers have their own identity.

Long-tailed Tits

I spend lots of time watching the bird life in my garden. Pheasant strut onto the patio, rooks caw overhead and in the tree tops noisily, green woodpeckers stab their beaks into the ground hunting for ants and many garden species enjoy the bird feeders. Long-tailed Tits are among my favourites. In big family groups they cluster together amicably on the feeders in the lilac tree, and then they are off. Such a fleeting glimpse. I have moved out of the sketchbook onto an A4 sheet of watercolour paper. A bird book is open and I read more about the characteristics and habitat. I study the photo illustrations, my own photos too blurry or distant to be much use. I sketch 3 little birds in pencil, just studies, not a full composition.

Using a big paintbrush I sweep burnt sienna and Payne’s grey watercolour onto the birds and beyond. On impulse, whilst still wet, I grab a peg and dash outdoors to the feeders and peg the page to a twig. It is very windy, the page flaps about wildly. The paint drips down with gravity and wind action. I encourage this further by spattering on more water with my brush. It feels elemental and crazy and I am delighted to see my drawn birds flapping in the lilac tree where earlier, I had watched a flock of these little beauties. 

Art Tips:

How could you interact more with the elements? Let the wind push wet paint over the page. Let falling raindrops react with water soluble media. Let frost form ice crystals in watercolour.

Blackberry Season

Early September, the field is edged with blackberries. My young grandson is visiting with my daughter. We wander up the field in the sunshine, picking blackberries… some in the pot, some we eat and savour fresh off the bramble bushes. I bring a sprig back with me to the patio table. Inspiration strikes, “Who would like to squash blackberries?” I quickly gather sketchbooks, pens, pencils and spread them on the table. My grandson watches with surprise as I squash some of the juicy fruits onto my paper and needs no encouragement to try the same on his pages! Even my daughter can’t resist this playful approach. We spend a happy hour squashing blackberries, drawing and chatting. I add a pen drawing on the facing page and use water to spread out some of the juices.    

I do some penwork to describe the little lobes of each fruit over the main blobs of dried juice and highlights are added with a white gel pen. Blackberries are fun to squash, draw and delicious to eat!

   Art Tips:

How can you incorporate some natural colour into your journal pages? Squash and rub flowers/leaves/berries if they are in your garden or abundant in the wild. Tap pollen from flowers or catkins and press or smear to stain the paper. Maybe try your hand at making natural botanical inks?

Pat, Present and Future

For many years I taught adult art classes and gradually my interest became focused on drawing the natural world. As adults we can have a lot of expectations and insecurities about creativity and I have always been passionate in my encouragement of experimentation, playfulness and enjoyment of the process rather than the final outcome. As I look at my grandson, who turns 4 in September, and watch his intuitive in-the-moment approach to creative activities I am full of admiration. Contemplating the future I hope I will have many years out in nature with my grandchildren, sketchbooks in hand – experimenting, playing and chatting about our discoveries.

Whatever your style of nature journaling, whatever your level of experience, I do hope you have found something of interest in my approaches. Why not unleash your inner child and experiment a little?

About Tod

Tod Evans is a versatile artist and very much inspired by the natural world. She happily works with pencils, charcoal, pens, inks, watercolour, acrylics and pastels – often combining several media when exploring the potential of an idea. Her artwork currently focuses on developing more expressive personal mark-making and can be described as ‘lively’, with fusions of colour including dribbles and spatter, often overlaid with calligraphic strokes of brushwork, pastels or inks.

Instagram: @tod.evans

Finding my way through art: How my unexpected life path led me to nature journaling

 I wanted to write a blog post that helps others remember that there is more than one way to realise your potential as an artist. We are all so conditioned to follow a formula of education followed by employment, when in real life our paths can meander all over the place and have us end up in unexpected places!

My earliest memory of drawing is of when I was sat on my mum’s lap, probably no more than four years of age, doodling wild animals in a picture book about them. Something striking from that memory is how my mum allowed me to draw in books (I later worked as a librarian and can empathise with anyone horrified at the thought!). Rather than chiding me for “ruining” my books, my mum allowed and encouraged me to add my own art to them. I think that really had a strong influence on me as an artist, and is certainly something that shows in my most recent nature journaling: My artwork is a collage of images and writing, assembled together from experiences. I hasten to add that I don’t make a habit of doodling in books that aren’t my own!

Another childhood memory is of my uncle Richard taking me birdwatching and pond-dipping with him. I was about five or six, and together we explored the Nottinghamshire countryside in search of different species. My time with him really nurtured a deep love of nature, and a fascination with so many animals. He too would sketch and journal the things he saw, so I was certainly influenced by him as well.

 People might find it strange that I didn’t formally study art until I left school. I’m from a working class family and I’ve no doubt my parents were working too hard to be able to notice and direct my artistic talents in an academic sense. I missed out on GCSE Art at school, and didn’t do an A-Level in Art until I was 24. I left school with very average qualifications, and didn’t get the grades I needed to study zoology or ecology at university. At 18, I ended up in vocational training and a job I’d had no intention of getting.

 This part of my tale isn’t a sob story – I have no regrets and I’m truly content with the path of events that has led to where I am in my life. I wanted to mention this part of my experience as an artist, to remind others that you don’t need to follow the standard, accepted way of things, nor bow to the pressure of getting the “right” qualifications to achieve what you want in life. All you need is a strong desire to get something, and the willingness to work hard and persevere at it.

After getting an ‘A’ in A-Level Art (my first ever ‘A’ in anything!), I then did a Foundation in Art and Design, which is a multi-disciplinary course intended to help choose a degree course in the Arts. At 26, I went to Bournemouth to study Model Making for Design and Media and although I thoroughly enjoyed the degree course, I didn’t feel like the industry was for me. Creating sets, maquettes and costumes for TV and movies is thrilling work, but also comes with an environmental price: The waste and toxicity of the materials involved just didn’t sit right with my ecological principles. I quit, took a year out in Australia to get my bearings, then returned to London to complete my degree in different subject: Painting.

At the age of 34, I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art: Painting in 2013. I’d always drawn and painted over the years, but doing that degree really helped me find my own visual voice. It also gave me the confidence to express myself and exhibit my work. I had my first solo show near Waterloo in London, and connected with so many other talented artists in that city.

After five years of living in London, I went nomadic and taught English to non-native speakers from my laptop. I spent half a decade living out of a bag and travelling through over 30 countries. Not having a fixed place of abode meant I couldn’t make or store large artworks, so keeping my creative output small and portable was the only option. I missed being able to work with paint and on a large scale, but found a new joy in using ink and pencil, filling lots of little books with sketches and impressions from my travels.

 At the time of writing this post, I don’t make a living from my artwork. In fact, I never have. I worked as an English language teacher during and after my studies, and continued to teach English abroad and online right up until last November. I mention this because many people aspire to earn money from their creative talents, and while this is possible, I would say it isn’t easy. There’s also a risk that in putting pressure on yourself to make a living from art, you turn something pleasurable into a chore.

I’ve always wanted to work in a job that helps our natural world, so my recent appointment as a trainee with the Sussex Wildlife Trust has fulfilled that dream. When I got offered the role in November 2021, I started doing a regular nature journal and posted it online. I figured it would be a great way to document my journey of learning about land management and community engagement in the environmental conservation sector.

My nature journal is something that allows me to study, memorise and illustrate within the context of working in nature. I’m really pleased that it’s something that’s inspiring others, whether to create artwork of their own, to get out and experience more nature, or both!

About Mark

Mark Newton was born and raised on the edge of the Peak District in the East Midlands of the UK, and has been fascinated with the natural world from an early age.

 Proudest (wild) moments include cycling for ten days and 350 miles across Vietnam at the tender age of 21, crossing the Himalayas from Kathmandu to Lhasa while helping to make a documentary in 2004, hosting a solo exhibition of paintings in London in 2014, white-water rafting down the Zambezi, horse-riding on a beach in South Africa, and surfing with a pod of Hector’s Dolphins in New Zealand. He has visited over 30 countries so far and hopes that his carbon footprint is offset by the fact that he doesn’t intend to ever have children.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” - Keats

If you look around yourself you will find that nature is full of beauty and wonders. It has the power to tickle our imagination and yet soothe our senses at the same time.

View of one of my favourite places, Abbotabad city in Pakistan.

From a fallen feather to a fallen leaf, from a sprouting bud to a fully grown tree, from the quiet yet imposing landscape to the magnificent mountains and the hovering sky nature is full of countless wonders.

I feel overjoyed at the subject choices nature provides whether you look down, sideways or above you there is so much life for you to take in. The wind, the weathers, the changing seasons, the resilience of

natural life despite the harsh and changing environment is worthy of awe and wonder. You just need to pay attention to it so you can admire it fully.

I am astounded at all those shades of green made possible to see by the scientific working of human eye that is able differentiate between them is a miracle in itself. Every time I see a decaying leaf or tree I am reminded of the cycle of life, of death of birth, of renewal and how quietly nature does its job while we human beings have become so engrossed in the modern world with our virtual existence and our problems; that we have lost sight or thought for the simple pleasures and lessons that nature generously offers.

We are not truly living until and unless we take the time to pause, to see, to observe, to listen, to feel, to absorb, to reflect what our natural surroundings bring us. You don’t have to leave city life to do that (though there is no harm in that).

Take a piece of paper, a pencil or pen, sketch draw a leaf, a flower, a plant pot, a tree, a bird, whatever tickles your fancy. If you can overcome judgment and comparisons and do it for the sake of doing it you would be surprised at the sense of little joy it can bring. Describe the place you were at, what made you choose that particular object, what you like about it, what could be different about it, how do you think it will be in a week, month or a year. Write down your thoughts and feelings along with it.

People come and go, they leave but nature it is there telling us that there is a great power beyond our understanding and when you can’t control things and need to let things go look up to nature, practice patience and immerse yourself in it. Whether it is a photo you take, a memory you make, an imprint in your mind or on paper; nature is worth celebrating and a life in sync with it is worth living. 

 “To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.”- William Blake

About BUSHRA REHMAN

Bushra is a self-taught artist from Lahore, Pakistan. She prefers to paint in watercolors and acrylics, and has been painting since the last six years. She has exhibited her work nationally in Peshawar, Pakistan and internationally at FabrianoinAcquarello 2022, IWS, Italy.

She is currently working as a lecturer at National University of Science and Technology (NUST), Risalpur, Pakistan.  With an academic background in business administration and no formal art education; painting remains her joy and passion.  She also loves to nature journal which she discovered last year through nature journaling week and nature journaling blog. She hopes to inspire readers to take up nature journaling so it can bring them joy and peace.

You can find her on Instagram:
💥Watercolors 💥Acrylics (@bushra.rehman.artist) • Instagram photos and videos

Observation as inspiration

I am an artist living in Eastern Ontario, Canada, who makes flowers and plants out of paper. My process of finding a subject to work on, studying it, and creating a three-dimensional flower is one of intense connection with the plant and with nature itself. As I work to refine my craft, I find myself becoming more in tune with the plants and flowers around me. Recently I have been studying the flowers growing wild on my 6 acre patch of land near Lanark, Ontario. The resulting paper wildflowers form part of a continually evolving collection, that is as much a record of that place as a written diary would be.

My favourite place to be is in the forest, observing plants, trees and other wildlife. I’m always amazed at how different it is each time I go- even in the depth of winter. I also love paddling along the river and observing all of the flowers and plants along the banks. There is such a rich variety of life near water.

My process:

I’ve been making flowers and plant out of paper for about 15 years. Over the years I’ve learned when and where I can find certain flowers blooming and I will often go and seek them out. But I’m always on the lookout for new discoveries, too!

When I find a flower I want to recreate I will document it first. I take photos and make drawings, recording time and location and making notes about colour, size, and other characteristics. If the flower is abundant, I pick it and press it. My own personal herbarium is a prized possession; something that I turn to again and again for inspiration and accurate information. Sometimes I trace the petals and leaves into my sketchbook for reference later. This process helps me understand the flower or plant in a way that looking at photographs just doesn’t do.

Once I have the flower documented, I can proceed with making a design. Often I’ll work in white first just to get the shape and size correct. I like to work with all sorts of different papers, from crepe paper to recycled cardboard to convey different textures and weights. Some plants have thick, shiny leaves, and others have fine, delicate blossoms, details that I try to reflect in my finished piece. Sometimes I add bits of cotton or varnish to add to the effect.

I also think about the colour. I will dye, paint, and layer papers together to get the colour right. Sometimes plants have tiny spots or lines and I will draw those on with ink. It is much easier to get the right colour if I’m working from a live plant.

Assembling the flowers is the most exciting part. I get to see the result of my research and design come to life! My studio has become like an indoor garden- with all of my favourites around me!

Working with plants in this observational way has helped me capture the whole essence of a plant. Often I will add buds or dead or dried leaves, seed pods, or fruit. I love to see how plants and flowers change through the season and I try to capture that in my work. When a flower sculpture is finished, I usually mount it inside a shallow shadow box for display. Again I will use the real plant as a guide to pose the stems and leaves naturally within the box. I like the graphic quality of a three-dimensional plant within a square box. I try to pay attention to the negative space around the flower and the background colour and texture. Mounting my pieces in this way encourages careful observation from the viewer. When I watch people look at my work I am amazed at the emotional reactions to the different plants. I often hear wonderful stories of peoples’ connections to specific flowers. Wildflowers seem to be especially powerful in bringing about emotional connection.

The process of transforming observation into a piece of art is a magical way to learn about and express the world around you. I encourage everyone to get outside, observe nature, and express your observations, be it as a sketch, journal, or some other art form.

About Linda:

I am an artist working out of my home studio in Almonte, Ontario, Canada. I use all sorts of paper and paint, along with glue and wire, to make realistic plants and flowers. I sell my work through my website under my business name, Daydream Flowers. I have exhibited my flowers in Canada and the United States and my pieces can be found in collections around the world.

Web Address: www.daydreamflowers.ca

Instagram: @Daydream_Flowers

Email: Lvohamilton@gmail.com

The Joy of Drawing Nature

During the first lockdown I re-discovered my love of drawing when I started to draw the plants and flowers in my garden and those I saw on my walks. Connecting with nature has been very important to me all my life. I need to be out every day, even if it is only for a short walk around the block to take in all that is growing and living around us with all my senses. It brings me joy and helps me to relax and feel connected with the life force that we are all part of.

For a few years, I had been sharing my daily observations by posting a photo each day on my Instagram account and during the first lockdown I started adding photos of my drawings. I found there were lots of inspiring nature artist on social media that were willing to share their work and tips and they gave, and are still giving, me lots of inspiration.

I do not keep a nature journal in which I record my finds in drawings and words. Instead I draw and paint whatever and whenever I like, which is at least once a week. I love experimenting with different techniques, art tools and media. I started drawing from the photos I took, but I’ve been drawing from nature in nature more and more. Mostly in our garden, but I also go out sometimes to find a spot to sit, observe and sketch.

Inspired by Katherine Owen (@thewalkingsketchbook) a fellow artist I connected with on Instagram, I started to include rain and snow in my drawings. Here you can see a rain painting I made. I drew the flower first, then added a few drops of ink and let the rain splash it around. After the ink was dry I added colour to the flower with colouring pencils. And this is a painting in collaboration with the snow. I brushed a layer of Quinck blue-black ink on paper keeping the moon empty and then took it outside to let tiny snow flakes fall on it. The snow flakes created these little stars turning everything into a magical night sky.

A year or so ago I also started making my own inks from plants and flowers. Such a fun things to do and a lovely medium to work with. I have made ink from Acorn caps, Poppies, Daffodils, Privet Berries, Rooibos tea, Golden Rod and even Apple tree bark.
Here is a drawing a made with dip pen and brush and two of my inks: Apple bark and Privet berry.

Using dip pen is a great way to free up my drawing as you cannot help it getting a bit messy, which I love. Another way to free up my sketching was by using a stick. This is a sketch of our Medlar tree made with a stick and Privet berry ink. I also like drawing with my non-dominant hand and I love continuous line drawings. I find using all these different techniques, tools and materials keeps it fun and, as in nature, there are so many things to learn and discover.

Hopefully this blog has given you some inspiration to go outside, connect with nature and have fun experimenting with all kinds of ways to draw nature!

About Marion

My name is Marion Ooijevaar (my surname means Stork) and I live with my husband, our lovely dog Lotte and two chickens in a small village in the centre of the Netherlands. I work at a teaching college, teaching English and Environmental Education and I have set up ‘Connecting With Nature’ as a means to encourage people to go outside and use all their senses to observe nature and all its wonders.

Instagram: @connectingwithnature.nl
website: www.connectingwithnature.nl

From The Notebook

The term ‘Nature Journaling’ is relatively new to me.

It first attracted my attention on social media or possibly YouTube a few years ago probably by watching the great videos of John Muir Laws. For a while, that description did not seem to fit my output. I don’t go out ‘Nature Journaling’ and my notes often do not look like the beautifully accomplished examples generally on show. They are more of a written diary that is sometimes illustrated when the inspiration arises and often the sketches are kept separate to the written notes. Hence, they are still referred to as ‘my notebooks’ rather than ‘my nature journals’ .

I have been interested in Natural History most of my life with a particular focus on Birds, Butterflies and Moths, but over the years this interest has branched out to where I now find myself looking at just about any life form that doesn’t require the use of a microscope.

Although I began watching birds as a child in the mid 1970’s I didn’t keep the notes or drawings I made then, which is something I regret. The earliest, rough, small notebook that is in my collection is from 1985 and I have kept them ever since, in varying formats. I keep telling myself to stick with a style and really wish I could, but they change like the wind, to suit my taste at a given time. 

We all have individual styles and tastes when it comes to creativity. My own aspirations are to record what is seen rather than what is known. This can be difficult and often results in some unaccomplished looking work but I quite like that. A loose, rougher style has always attracted my attention with artists the likes of David Measures, Eric Ennion, John Busby, Eileen Soper, Norman McCanch, Peter Partington and DIM Wallace and many other being my influences.

If I was to give advice to anyone starting out with an interest in nature, I would suggest keeping notebooks or journals in any form that you enjoy. Try not to just quote from things you have read in other books or seen elsewhere but make your own personal observations, no matter how small. Even the briefest of entries can, in future, bring the memories of that day come flooding back. Try not to compare your own work with that of more experienced experts, writing and illustration are learned disciplines just as playing a guitar or driving a car is, it all takes practice.

Many people look at works of great artists and become disappointed when their own efforts seem very amateur-ish but they shouldn’t feel like this, it’s a bit like being disappointed when you can’t play tennis like Serena Williams! Just stick with it and enjoy the learning process in the knowledge you are improving all the time while creating a source of memories for yourself in the future.

One final point. You should not feel pressured to publish all of your work on social media, but, if you feel confident enough, I’m sure we would all really enjoy seeing it! Good Luck.

About Stewart

I take photos but I’m not a photographer and I paint but I’m not an artist either! Despite this I have been lucky enough to be published in a variety of books and magazines over the years as and when people are kind enough to ask.  My friends say I never ‘switch off’ with regard to wildlife and as the saying goes, ‘I don’t go birding, I AM birding’. Being in the presence of nature in any form is my reality.

Please see more of my work and wildlife outings at my blog – Stewchat www.boulmerbirder.blogspot.com

 Stewart Sexton, Northumberland.

Fascinated by Swans

My earliest memories of nature journaling come from when I was little. My dad and I used to go for walks watching the birds, picking up objects, and seeing what we could spot – the birds and animals were always favourites. On returning home, I would sit at the coffee table with a “book” made from dad’s old work paper to record the finds we had brought home, both in pictures and words.

Skip forward many years and as an artist I usually have different sketchbooks that I work in simultaneously. They vary in size and paper and are often used for specific things such as urban sketching and watercolours. Within these are drawings and paintings of nature and pocket hitchhikers such as conkers and leaves. Alongside using a sketchbook to record nature, I am always taking photos.

In 2018, I was inspired by the nature journalist Jules Woolford to start a specific nature journal. I also bought John Laws fabulous book The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling, which is so inspirational and a great guide for drawing the natural world. I created quite a few page spreads throughout that year and then… it got neglected being brought out mainly for the International Nature Journaling Weeks. This spread is one that I created in it for my swan project.

Throughout my life I have been fascinated by swans and have sketched them from life since art college days. In 2021, I decided to create a project where I would aim to capture the beauty and movement of swans in various mediums. Starting between lockdowns, I have used a concertina sketchbook to capture swans in all aspects of their life. The handsome swan in my photo was marvellous as it posed for numerous photos and sketches and then came to check out if I had captured their likeness.

In the concertina, I have used different pencils or focused on specific things, like their feet, but I usually get distracted and draw what captures my attention on the day. Here are some images from my concertina sketchbook.

I believe drawing is the basis for all good artwork, especially observational drawing such as these studies from life. In order to improve my knowledge of swans, I have located a museum that has an articulated swan skeleton. However, I will be drawing it on sheets of paper rather than in my nature journal, as I feel larger paper will enable me to capture more. I may then use the journal for specific parts like the skull and wing, let’s see.

For the finished pieces of my Swan Project, due to be completed next year, I hope, I am drawing on black paper with coloured pencils (mainly white of course) and Inktense blocks. Alongside those, I am creating paintings in watercolour and mixed medium.

I believe that even when my swan project is completed I will continue to sketch and photograph swans, alongside other parts of nature that captures my attention, don’t you?

About Sue

I am an international exhibiting artist, currently based in Suffolk UK, producing commissioned drawings and paintings for private collectors. My art is filled with nature and expressed in watercolour and ink. The natural world, gardens and diverse cultures are recurring themes. Whilst realistic in appearance, an artwork represents my interpretation of what I see. Originally a pen and ink artist more often colour enters my work in the form of watercolours or acrylics.

Website: www.suepownallartist.co.uk

Instagram: @suepownallartist15

Etsy shop: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SuePownallArtist

Facebook: www.facebook.com/suepownallartist

Twitter: @suepownall