In my struggle to do more nature journaling, I got some help from a recent episode of The Nature Journal Show by Marley Peifer on burnout. While I’m not burnt out, his advice helps make nature journaling both fun and easy to do. In fact, you can apply most of his advice to any creative activity you enjoy. Two of the eight tips in his 15-minute video have already helped me.
Continue reading Nature Journaling: How Doing Less Can Lead to More
There’s a belief that all the great artists are inspired, that what makes their work wonderful is a brilliant idea or new insight. But this is just a myth. A single moment of brilliance can be blinding to the rest of us, but there’s more to it than that. You can’t make use of inspiration if you don’t know how to use your medium. Great art comes from lots of work, which can be summed up in one word: practice.
Continue reading Waiting for Inspiration? Spend the Time Practicing
One of the fun things we got to see back in November were dinosaur tracks. While I am a dinosaur fan, I find it hard to imagine what dinosaurs looked like from their bones. Bird skeletons have taught me that predicting an organism’s shape from its skeleton is tricky. Seeing their footprints, however, helped bring them to life.
Continue reading Walking After the Dinosaurs: Fossilized Tracks
While I’ve been interested in nature journaling for years, I’ve struggled to develop a good journaling habit. I am lucky enough to live on a lake, which seems like an ideal place to observe nature. But in fact, most of the birds and animals I see are so far away it’s hard to make out details, even with binoculars. Cold weather and poor health have made it hard to get outside where I might get a better look. Then two pieces of advice changed everything for me.
Continue reading Diagramming Bald Eagles: My Nature Journal Project
On our trip to Utah, I made a point of drawing daily. But my real goal was to journal about the natural world. Inspired by The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling, I made an effort to more closely observe my surroundings and to ask questions about what I saw. I found myself looking around for the answers as well.
Continue reading How Nature Journaling Inspired Me To Solve A Mystery