Explorer and nature journal educator Marley Peifer has created a video to discuss ways to incorporate movement into the pages of our nature journals and more movement of our own bodies in nature.

Australian watercolour artist and nature journal educator Kim Lapere presents a video with inspirational prompts on ways to journal the about the movement of your own body in nature.

Water is a dynamic part of the natural world. It is a powerful force that literally shapes the landscape with its movement. Is there as source of water accessible to you? It might be a calm pond in your local botanic gardens, or it might be the crashing waves on the rocky shore. See if you can nature journal about the movement of water and how it influences the living and non-living parts of the ecosystem.

Tracks tell the story of animal movement. It can be fun to learn how to read these little clues in the landscape and nature journal about the signs of animal movement. Nature journal educator Marley Peifer talks about tracking opportunities in urban areas in this blog post. Go outside and see if you can find evidence of animal movement in your local area. You might find claw marks on the trunk of a tree, or paw prints in the soil. Put these stories of movement in your nature journal using words and pictures to describe what you notice.

Moving our bodies in nature is both healthy and fun! Using our nature journals to capture our physical experiences in nature is a great way to tell a story. Nature journaler Kathryn Gander likes to create journal pages about what she sees during her daily walks. You can see Kathryn’s blog post about her drawn walks here.

Head outdoors and move your body in whatever way is accessible and healthy for you. This might be just sitting quietly and observing the body’s physical sensations. How could you capture your experience in your nature journal? Perhaps you could write about how it feels or even sketch yourself!

Sketching moving animals is a nature journal challenge! It requires that you work fast and let go of perfectionism. A great drawing technique for capturing moving subjects is gesture sketching, which allows you to capture the quick movements without fussing with detail. Bethan Burton describes how to capture movement with gesture sketching in this video. John Muir Laws shows how to sketch moving animals in Episode 34 of his Nature Journal Connection video series: Animals on the Move.

Take your sketchbook outside and see if you can sketch a moving animal subject. Aim to capture the overall shape and gesture without worrying about the details. Have fun!

Light and shadow constantly changes as the sun moves throughout the day. The level of light or shadow on your subject can drastically change the colours and mood of a scene. Painter and gardener Claude Monet was famous for painting the same scene in his Giverny garden at different times of the day. Even though the subject was the same, the changes in light and shadow changed the scene entirely.

Pay attention to the way light and shadow move throughout the day in your nearby nature. Try drawing a subject in the morning, afternoon and early evening and see the difference this makes to the colour and mood of your drawing.

Documenting growth and change in your nature journal is a way of recording the movement of time. Watch a plant grow by drawing the same individual specimen several times over a number of days or weeks. How does it change through time? Use a ruler to measure the growth and record this on your page. It can be fun to draw a flower in all its stages of development, from bud, to blossom, and then continuing as it fades, watching the changes in shape and colour over time.