The Cornell Lab Bird Academy › Discussion Groups › Nature Journaling and Field Sketching › Style Your Journal Your Way
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Bird AcademyBird Academy1. What inspired you to begin nature journaling? 2. Now that you’ve heard from several other journalers about their processes, and had a peek at their journals, which ideas or approaches do you want to try? 3. Do you have a different journaling idea, not mentioned here, that you’d like to share?You must be enrolled in the course to reply to this topic.
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I love being in nature either walking in a park or spending time in my garden. I want to deepen my experience and I think nature journalling will help me slow down and be present in the moment. I used to be good at art when I was younger but moved away from it as I focused on a career in accounting. I realized how much I missed being creative which drew me to this.
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Hi Laura, I thought I would reply to your message because we have a few thoughts in common. I too enjoyed art tremendously when I was younger. I also moved away from it as I climbed the career ladder. I am now slowly stepping down the ladder and taking this course is really helping me to focus on nature and watercolors to see more to life. I am looking forward to more and more artistry and journaling things that are in my garden and when I take my nature walks. Thanks for sharing and reading this.
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I am a naturalist,science teacher and aspiring artist. Nature journaling is the perfect marriage of these interests of mine. I’m hoping to start simple and my own pollinator garden in my yard. With my own plants and my own yard I can do it on the daily basis, and I can see how things change in the season. I hope that it could be a record for myself, my memories, and for my grandchildren to see how the garden grows.
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I want to combine my love of gardening/nature with my love of sketching. Sketching an object teaches you much more about an object such as a tree or plant than a photo ever could.
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I came to nature journaling as way to slow down and be more mindful about what was there around me but which I was kind of taking for granted. I also wanted to learn how to draw and paint as this is something that I have always found a little challenging. I like that all the journals were different and that really there’s no right or wrong way of doing it- it kind of just evolves!
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Nature journaling feels like a way to slow down time. In a fast-paced life it is too easy for all the details to become blurred. I want to use nature journaling as an opportunity to sit, observe, sketch, write a story, take a note with no pressure for the end result or a rush to finish. I found looking at the various journal styles very freeing in the fact that you can do it however you want, and it may change over time. Putting the pen/pencil/brush to paper is the hardest first step.
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I have kept personal journals since I was in the Peace Corps 1970 to 1973. I often put sketches and pictures in my journals, but have never been satisfied with the quality of my sketches. I now travel a great deal with my wife and have taken up birding as a hobby to keep me occupied as we go from place to place. Now I want to keep up journaling ( I have been lax for the last few years) and at the same time increase my skill at depicting what I am seeing in the journal.
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I am both an artist and a biologist and I want to be able to merge the two skills. The journals above sure gave me lots of inspiration. I like how some are framed, I think I want to try that. I also really liked McNeills sketchbook approach, but I think i want to lean more towards the first one with notes and illustrations.
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The various nature journals shown were inspiring and, yes, also intimidating! Still, they show me how to learn to look closely and to really see and the drawing (good or bad) is not so much the end as the means to help me do that.
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I enjoyed the variety in these different examples! I also love Edith Holden's "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady" - I loved that she included poetry and other things within her journal and have used it as a model for my nature journal so far this year (though my drawing talent if very novice... so what I've created so far is not so beautiful).
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I am a very big birder, and I've found that a lot of birding is trying to see as many species as you can during a certain time or at a specific place, a lot of birding is all go, go, go, rushing around from species to species. Nature journaling will help me slow down and take time to appreciate the little things about the birds, and their environments, that I love. I want to begin nature journaling to understand my favorite birds more in depth, and become more knowledgeable on their behaviors and plumages, all while keeping track and cataloging experiences so I can look back at them forever. I liked the first girl who had boxes around her drawings and writing woven in between the boxes. I like how she set aside a seperate space for her drawings, I think trying that in my own sketches will be helpful to me because I write a lot in my journals, so much so that sometimes words have to take up the whole page, and the sketch has to go on a whole separate page. I like when both the sketches and their explanations are on the same page. I am very excited to do this course!
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I have always loved nature but birding definitely inspired me to journal. I am also a fly fisherman and see amazing things while out on the river. I'm excited to integrate that in my journal as well. I think my journal will be a combination of the styles we saw but was particularly impressed by the first girl with the boxes for drawing and writing around them.
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I can't access any videos. It says that the video may be temporarily down or could have moved to another location...:(
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ElizabethBird AcademyHi Patricia. I hope the issue you encountered with video access was temporary, and that you have been able to view videos since. If you run into any technical issues in the future, please contact Customer Service directly. Our specialists will be happy to assist you. Happy journaling!
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Actually I did not want to have a journal, and I still don't. I just wanted to improve my sketching and painting of nature. I am a bit disappointed to find so much information about journaling but perhaps I didn't read the fine print well enough.
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This will be a new area for me; although I have taken a variety of art courses, and have sketched birds in the past I like the idea of combining what I actually see on the trail instead of just taking a cell phone pic or making a note on my phone. I think the issue will be standing, since I have moderate arthritis. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to sketch on trail.
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(Unfortunately I keep losing my notes here when I temporarily switch to another page. ) I am a retired field biologist who worked in natural resources. I have sometimes used field notes to keep track of my field trips, but often those included notes and small sketches about miscellaneous, non-target, issues. However, those notes later helped me piece together things that later became important to what I have seen. So the idea of field notes/journal is something I value, and should have used more. I have tended to use photography more than drawings to record images of interest to me, and recently have tended toward macro level images... small details of twigs, insects, flowers etc. But interesting images and patterns of all sorts attract me. I would expect my journal to be one with detailed images flowing across the page with only minimal respect for borders and frames. (note photos at: https://rgdudley.smugmug.com/ ) -RGD
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I am an English teacher who taught Henry David Thoreau's works for years. I started nature writing during that time. This past summer, I was inspired to keep a journal because I took trips to Nova Scotia and the Galapagos and wanted to keep notes of these adventures. I also spend a lot of time on Cape Cod during the summer. I tried to include drawings in my journal but found it never looked how I wanted it to, so I stuck to writing. This course popped up the other day after I had asked someone about taking beginner art lessons, and I thought it was a sign. I was inspired and a bit intimidated by the drawings of the woman who used boxes on her pages to create her pictures and then write her observations around the boxes. I liked the looks of the boxes and felt like I could make some small pictures to start with. But I liked everyone’s journals, and I’m excited to add images and colors to accompany my writing. I wish this class had popped up a year ago.
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I have always loved being in nature, whether it be for sporting activities or just observing. Lately I've started to take time to be more present and in the moment in all aspects of my life. I thought perhaps by starting a journal this would help me to slow down and really take time to focus and observe the nature I was enjoying. Trees, plants, lakes, streams, birds and all wildlife. I also think by drawing and writing about what I see will help me learn and identify what I don't already know. I'm excited to get started. I just hope I'm not too hard on myself because I'm not the best artist like some of the journalists I watched in the videos. They are so talented.
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I just love birds and I was really looking for a way to reignite my love of being outdoors and my relationship with nature. I wanted to pull myself away from devices more and pursue the magic of the natural world. I very much enjoy whimsical art that uses animals and nature as the focus. So I am hoping to use this course as a stepping stone towards creating art that integrates nature, birds, whimsy, and magic.
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I have always been surrounded by naturalists. My dad ran a lecture series at the Smithsonian and my mom was an illustrationist. My dad was involved with rehabilitating and banding hawks and owls for Fish and Wildlife. Great Horned Owls both injured, one by barbed wire and one by a car, lived outside my window for many years until they could be placed at a nature center. (Monongahela, the male GHO will live forever in the Roger Tory Peterson bird guides) Redtail hawks, screech owls, and barn owls were in breezeways, closets, and large enclosures on our property preparing for release. I learned to cut up mice and carrion for the youngsters that were brought to us until they too could be returned to the wild through falconry, etc. Now that I am retired from teaching I want to venture back to that world. Ebird and Merlin have reaffirmed my knowledge of birds as I move around our 200 acres. I wanted a method to document and share my observations other than my bird lists. Journaling has filled that gap. Writing down and drawing my observations has taken me out of my comfort zone and pushed me to look for details. Hearing and seeing swamp sparrows, song sparrows, white-throated sparrows, and then a fox sparrow (the first time on my list) and then drawing each of them was a challenge. But in so doing I learned their intricacies. I also want to add plants to my repertoire. I enjoyed all the journals and hope to replicate and tweak what they have done. Each day I will travel with my dogs to the woods, listen, observe, write down, and sketch what I see. I will fine-tune it when I get home. My nature journal will travel with me to my grandkids' houses and I will get them journaling. They are all still in elementary or younger institutions but on our walks can identify most of the birds we hear, with me and Merlin filling in the blanks.
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1. I used to draw and paint often as a teenager in my early 20s until life became too busy. Also, I lived in a place where it wasn’t safe to be on your own outdoors. Now in my early 60s, when the pressures have eased, I’ve been longing to get back to my art. I didn’t know there was such a thing as nature journaling until I saw the course advertised. I’ve never wanted to write a diary but do worry that I forget so many of the things that I experience. I’ve just changed career from another field into bird conservation, and now have opportunities to be in nature much more than before. So, everything has come together to make nature journaling something I would like to try. 2. Strangely enough, I like the idea of starting each page with notes on the place, date, time and weather. I would never have thought of doing this! I like it because it shifts the focus to scientific observation, rather than having to make a work of art, which takes some of the pressure off. I’m not keen to do too much other writing - maybe only some unique features or personal responses - so am aiming to fill my pages with different views of the same subject, like the person who drew the Mourning Doves. I am also going to try his technique of first blocking the main shapes of the head and body, as I really struggle with getting the proportions of a bird correct. 3. Drawing from photos is obviously an alternative but I think the special thing about nature journaling as described here is that it is done ‘live’ which creates a completely different dynamic and emotional response, along with particular challenges.
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It is so easy to take a picture of what you see, but then it gets left behind in the nether sphere. I like that a journal tells a story. It helps you stop and better observe what you see. I feel that once journaling becomes habit, it will provide insight over time of all the things that I observe. Also, the more I do it, the better I will get at capturing what I see on its pages.
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I want to be drawn deeper into the natural world through quiet observation, and I'd like to be able to keep a record of what I have seen and experienced besides through words or photographs. I thought each of the journals had something really interesting to convey -- the layout of the boxes and then moving outside them, to let the journal show mistakes, noticing geometric shapes, how watercolors give you color quickly, using the journal as a discipline to do one sketch a day, and then moving to a month. I'd like to try them all.
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I just returned from a trip to Costa Rica. I brought my sketch book and WC paints and found much inspiration to draw/paint....however, I am most comfortable looking at a photo vs. drawing or painting en plein air. I am hoping that this course will help to give me tools/techniques and confidence to try to sketch/paint what I see vs. a photograph of it.
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Wow, these are beautiful drawings! Are they Costa Rica birds? We are going to Costa Rica in 2 weeks and so excited to see some interesting new birds!
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@Deb Hi Deb - yes, we saw the brown pelicans daily along the shore and the motmot at a nature reserve in Samara. I highly recommend going on an "adventure trip" with a naturalist to help you see the variety of flora and fauna in CR!
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I think I will start out small with only writing and work into adding some sketches and then plan to develop those sketches into artwork!
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