Harvesting A Regular And Fluid Nature Journaling Practice
Life is busy, but treating yourself with grace is key to a regular practice.
My dearest readers,
I am dedicating the month of September to getting ourselves primed to the nature journal regularly. Since I believe busy times warrant a fluid approach, we will focus on a habitual practice that you feel free to define for yourself. All I ask is that you commit to journaling with regularity, and I’ll help with prompts and chats throughout the month to keep you on track.
My summer has been fraught with familial health issues, weather (it rained – a lot), and imposter syndrome. Dealing with the external obstacles to nature journaling is much easier than the internal ones, I’ll admit, but obstacles are obstacles and we have to figure a way through, around, or over them. This is why you commit to a “regular” practice while giving yourself permission to wax and wane.
And so I write this post for you and for me to help us both navigate the unexpected, our insecurities, and our sense of being overwhelmed, which are the true conspirators against our practice.
Why nature journal?
It bears repeating that nature in its various forms is comforting. We are predisposed to feel an affinity for nature and on a physiological level feel its grounding rhythms. Is there a better argument for taking a few moments during the day to take it in?
You don’t have to live in the countryside or a national park to take pleasure in the natural world. It’s all around us in urban and suburban areas, too. It can be as simple as observing the pigeons in Rittenhouse Square (Philadelphia), studying the hunting habits of the Peregrine falcons in the skies above New York City, or marking the changes in that tree that grows on the corner of your street in Brooklyn. Nature can always be found beneath your feet wherever you are standing.
The most important takeaway from this piece
All-or-nothing thinking has no place in nature journaling.
If you find yourself believing you just can’t take the time to be in nature, multi-task (although full disclosure, as a former maniacal multi-tasker I am against it, but you know… life happens…). Eat your breakfast on your patio or balcony, or sit outside on your front steps. Make use of that camera phone in your pocket and snap a few quick photos on your walk to work, school, or even your car. Or nature journal from your groceries as I did this week (see above)!
If you find yourself thinking that you’re not going to nature journal because you haven’t done it in a while, stop it! You can miss days, even weeks, because nature is always here for you.
If you think you’ll never be good at nature journaling because… insert the reason du jour here, well, pish tosh! (I’ve always wanted to say this…) That’s not even a real excuse. It feels real, but it’s not. We are hard-wired to be curious, observant, and see patterns. These inherent abilities are all you need to nature journal.
As close observers of nature, we can embrace cycles and rhythms of growth and contraction in our practice. You will have times when you can nature journal for hours every day, finishing a big spread with writing, research, and color, and times when you only have 5 minutes every other day to partially capture an experience with a quick sketch note.
So do what you can, when you can because there’s no FOMO in nature.
There’s always something going on!
The important thing is to journal regularly as you define it. Below I have some ideas and links to help navigate the unexpected, insecurities, and feeling overwhelmed.
The Unexpected
I try to embrace that the only reasonable expectation in life is that it’s filled with the unexpected. Health issues, weather, impromptu errands, job emergencies, and so much more that we really have no control over conspiring to steal our intent and attention. I wrote the following piece a while back that may be worth cherry-picking for something helpful, but in a nutshell, carving out time to do anything just means knowing what your negotiables and non-negotiables are, and then moving it all around to make the time.
Sounds so easy, doesn’t it? It isn’t, but it is doable.
I also strongly suggest keeping a perpetual journal in addition to your regular nature journal for those times when it’s absolutely impossible to commit to a full page or spread. Or make a perpetual journal your only nature journal for a while. It’s a brilliant form of nature journaling created by Lara Call Gastinger that gracefully lends itself to an irregularly regular practice. I wrote more about it here:
Having a rotten day is another way life can unexpectedly derail our practice. A sour day makes you want to curl up into a ball and hide, but here’s the thing, nature journaling is an antidote to the ennui. You don’t even have to go outside (although I highly recommend it). Scroll your phone photos or the ‘net for a reference photo, use the framework INIWIRMO to get the inquisitive juices flowing, and just begin. I guarantee that once you begin to lose yourself in curiosity, the stress will dissipate. Stop when you feel like stopping, because unfinished doesn’t exist in nature journaling.
Insecurities
The number one thing people say to me when I tell them what I do is “I wish I could draw.” The second most frequent comment? “I can’t draw!” So let’s dispel that myth. Everyone who can hold a stick has the inherent dexterity needed to draw, and the rest – drawing what you see, using shading and perspective to make it “look real,” and matching the myriad of colors you see – all that can be learned.
I’m the quintessential example of this. Like most children, I loved to color and draw blockhead people with heart-shaped mouths. It wasn’t until I was an adult and someone showed me how to draw that I was able to construct anything recognizable. It took hours of daily practice for years before I could draw a recognizable portrait, and I suspect it will take hours of daily practice for many more years before I can do so with personal expression and relative ease.
I’m not saying you need to spend hours every day in your nature journal, just that you keep an open mind, be patient with yourself, and know that drawing is an evolutionary process. The more you do it, the better you become at it. Besides nature journaling is not about drawing, it’s about observing and learning. Drawing is just the visual version of note-taking. Your drawings do not have to be pretty or even representational to others so long as they spark your visual memory.
Drawing, however, is a sneaky business, and you will get better at it over time.
In nature journaling, we draw to learn, but eventually, we learn to draw.
Ira Glass, of NPR’s This American Life, talked about the gap between our aesthetic taste and our abilities in this video, which helped me and I hope you, too:
Overwhelm
I also hear from people that they feel overwhelmed. They don’t know where to begin or even what to journal. I have a few suggestions to help with this.
First, recognize that everyone feels the same way. I feel it most of the time. Are you surprised? The world is a cornucopia of curiosities, and we wouldn’t be human if we weren’t overwhelmed by it all. In this week’s prompt (below), number three is especially effective when you are overwhelmed by what you see.
Make marks, jot down phrases and questions you have, and make a mess in the first few pages of your nature journal. I use the inside cover to test out materials and the fly leaf to record reminders and questions or write down prompts for myself in case I get stuck and don’t know where to begin.
Try going on a String Safari. I wrote about how to do this recently, so I’ll link to it here. I’ve also included a little PDF for you to download that shows you how it works. Paste it inside the cover of your nature journal so you always have something to journal.
This week’s prompt
Commit to nature journaling at an interval and duration that works for you. Start with something easy, and shorten the interval/increase the duration if you desire – lengthen/decrease if you have to, or any variation that suits this moment in your life. Remember it’s fluid so you can adjust at any time.
Find your sit spot - somewhere very convenient so that you don’t turn travel into a barrier. A spot in your yard or a park bench makes very convenient sit spots. Even your kitchen table can be a sit spot. Grab some veggies and/or fruit from the fridge, a sharp knife for “dissection,” and your nature journal supplies. Bonus: By the time you are done journaling, you’ll have a snack waiting for you!
Choose one subject to study over as many sessions as you want. It saves some time because you already have your subject, and if it’s already at your sit spot (*hint*), well then, huzzah! Make it really easy for yourself and focus on one thing that you have easy access to. Peruse the Prompt archive for journaling ideas and apply them to your one subject.
Accountability
Sometimes I hate this word, but this is a fun, friendly, no-pressure kind of accountability. Another word for it: Companionship. I’m going to start a chat for us to share (if you like), get inspired, and just hang out virtually. Post any time you’d like this week.
I’m also going to be live in the Chat for an hour on Friday, September 22 at 8 pm ET (USA) if you’d like to hang out, talk, and nature journal together. I’ll create a separate chat for this a few days before and let you know.
Book List/Resources:
The following resources have been very helpful for me. I hope they can be for you as well.
Samantha Dion Baker’s books, Draw Your Life and Draw Your World
These books about visual journaling are just awesome. They are within easy reach on a bookshelf in my studio because even though I’ve read them cover to cover, I find it relaxing to skip around to my favorite parts (all the parts are my favorite) when I need a little journaling refresher. (Psst, she’s also here on the ‘stack.)
John Muir Laws’ Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling
This is the nature journaling bible – or at least it is to me. It’s my all-time favorite book on the subject filled with how-to’s and inspiration.
Alwyn Crawshaw’s Sketching (part of the 30-minute series)
If you don’t know where to start with sketching, get a copy of this small but mighty book. It’s out of print, but worth tracking down. Easy to follow, quick to read, and filled with what you need to translate what you see onto the page in a relaxed way. It will have you sketching in no time!
Upgrade to my paid tier
Yes, I know, a shameless plug! But the paid tier is filled with extra insight, prompts, and demos to help inspire and motivate your practice. And if I can get enough of us together in this tier in the future, it would be fun to host live activities, like live drawing and other nature-related, socially creative activities we can do together in a Zoom-type setting. My dream is that we gather together with our beverages of choice and materials strewn about the table, chatting, drawing and writing, telling stories, and laughing…. Well, you get the picture.
And just for you from today through Tuesday, September 12, 2023, new annual subscriptions are 10% off for 12 months.
I hope this post was helpful. For the rest of the month, our weekly prompts are all designed to help us overcome our obstacles and create a regular practice for ourselves. I look forward to “seeing” you in the Chat, especially during the live hour on September 22!
xoSusannah
Thank you for this! This is a great collection of resources. I have been wanting to get started nature journaling for awhile now but just haven’t. I do feel overwhelmed and not sure where to begin! So these suggestions are helpful!