I learned so much in this class. I liked the basic drawing lessons which were a great refresher and felt that the practices built on each and helped me to improve my skills. The watercolor techniques were new to me and helped me to improve my painting. My favorite nature journaling experience was re-drawing and painting the yellow warbler. That helped me see how far I’ve come. My experiences with nature are focused on birds and native plant gardening. I find myself drawing and painting mostly birds and I’m enjoying that a lot. The journal page that I’ve attached is from a recent trip to Indiana. I love nature journaling, and expect to continue doing it. Thank you so much Liz! This was a great class.

I have learned so much and have started observing nature with a new perspective with sketching and painting. I think most of what I drew and painted were my wow moments because I was impressed with myself that I could do what I thought I couldn't. I tried all the suggestions and can't wait to get out more and practice.

I think my favorite nature journaling experience was when we were learning about blind contouring and how focusing more on the object you drawing rather than the drawing itself really helped and improve in sketching. (And it was just fun.) This class has really inspired me to get out in nature more and go on walks. I am really looking forward to being able to bring my sketch book and watercolors out on a trip or the next time I walk on a trail. I haven’t tried any of the journaling projects yet but I will keep them in mind and use them next time I bring my watercolors with. A funny moment was when it was pouring down rain outside and freezing and I couldn’t go on a walk to observe nature sounds and details so I had to sit in my driveway in the cold and observe the tree in my yard and (try) to listen to the birds in the trees over the cars driving by and the constant dripping of the gutter above my head. Overall, this class has definitely helped me see nature and animals in a completely different perspective and made me appreciate it. My art has improved since the beginning of the class and I am excited to keep learning and growing my artistic side.

I’m not sure I can pinpoint one specific experience. I haven’t had the opportunity to sketch outside a lot, because it’s been freezing cold over the past few weeks. But spring will soon be here, so I predict outdoor sessions up the hill near my flat, scanning my surroundings in search of this bird, that flower or that fresh leaf for my next drawing.

My favourite bits in general were the different mark-making techniques and the sessions on watercolours, because they opened up a whole new medium to me, and I can see myself practise more and more in the future and try to get better at them. Thank you!

I finally got a good watercolor sketchbook and started journaling right away. Starting the first page was surprisingly easy! I seem to have gotten rid of the feeling that I’m ruining everything and wasting good paper because I can't draw.

The subject came easily, by chance. I brought food for the birds and stayed to watch them. They fetch a seed or a peanut from the bird feeder and fly to the shelter of the tree branches to eat. I noticed that further away, behind the trees, there were also a lot of birds moving around. I went to look and found birds bathing and waiting for their turn. I knew that there was a spot in the slow-flowing stream that almost never freezes. I've lived here for 8 years, but only now did I find out that birds bathe there even in freezing temperatures! Of course, I didn't have my sketchbook with me, but I stayed for some time to watch the birds. I memorized their positions and appearance. Inside, I drew them as I remembered. I checked the colors and patterns in the pictures before I started painting. The end result is not exactly what I imagined, but I am still very happy! The memory of this amazing observation is preserved on this page.

Thank you Liz, this was an excellent course! I am really excited! I found a new hobby that makes me notice things and wonder a lot more.

I started on this course in the summer without any experience in watercolor painting. Thanks to Liz's empathy and encouragement, I have learned to accept my painting mistakes and push on. It is now October and this ruby-throated hummingbird shows how much I have progressed so far. I have a lot more to learn, and I am having a lot of fun on my journey! Thanks, Liz!

I have learned so much about water colors and will keep referring to my new Nature Journal! Adding detail is important but trying to not be so perfect is important. Just keep trying every day and see what wonderful things I will find out about myself and the natural world around me.

Thank you so much!

The nature journaling that I have done, as helped me to be much more attuned to the birds and other wildlife around me. I now am award of when birds fly past my windows when I am doing something else, something I just was not attuned to before.  And I REALLY want to know what that bird is at the feeder when I don't recognize it right away.

So in about July, we put up a nectar feeder off our back porch after seeing a Ruby Throated Hummingbird show great interest in a small flag we had hung there.  Those little birds have given us so much joy since then.  I had taken pictures of them, sketched them and even videoed  a "territorial"spat between 4-5 hummingbirds.  I also purchased a hummingbird handbook to learn more about them.  Only having Ruby-throated Hummingbirds in my area, I had no idea how many different varieties of hummingbirds there are.  So early on in my journaling we went down the road to a state lake and I saw a wildflower that I had never seen before.  I took a picture of it and later drew it in my journal.  As I was reading the handbook, I learned that the flower, Pink Fire, has a symbotic relationship with hummingbirds.  Cool!

Even though I am continuing to practice, I have found out that I am more comfortable using colored pencils in my journal and feel that I can put in more details using them than the watercolors.   However, I am also surprised at how much better I can sketch by practicing most days.  My friends call me an artist.  I laugh and say I am a budding naturalist.  Everyone needs a retirement hobby, right?

Milkweed seed pods: wet on wet, wet on dry, dry on dry.

I was so wrapped up in the illustrative process that I failed to describe many of my observations. My a-ha moment was the minute I put pencil to paper. I never thought I could do it. My learning curve seemed to be on the same level as most of the other students. I can see how the lessons can benefit individuals who aren't able to trek around but love flowers and plants. A sketchbook in the backyard can do wonders to lift one's spirit.

My favorite experience happened after finishing the section on chiaroscuro and suddenly seeing highlights in objects, paintings, and photographs. It sounds like such a simple thing, but I had never really noticed it before. The same thing happened after finishing the section on mixing colors and suddenly noticing the nuance of colors in the everyday objects around me.

I also loved drawing the song sparrow upside down and having it look like the actual picture I was copying.

One of my most frustrating experiences was working on filling a sketch with color, attempting to erase a slight pencil mark where I wanted to place the eye of a bird, and smudging the still-wet section. Ugh. Lesson learned.

 

I actually found a nature journaling monthly meetup in my city. Each month we meet up in a different park or forest preserve and journal for ~3 hrs. I've met some nice people and have enjoyed learning from them and sharing our experiences together. This year was full of hard times but this group really helped me focus on the good things in life - nature and people who are inspired by it.

A very exciting incident occurred while I was sitting in my yard listening and observing one morning. I was near a large "crop" of beautiful yellow tar weed and there was a gentle breeze causing the long stems to sway back and forth. I was enjoying the moment when one of the yellow flowers dipped down, then up. It caught my eye and then another flower dipped down, then up. I watched more closely and saw that it was a bee collecting pollen! I watched it move from flower to flower and when it reached the flower right next to me, I could see the yellow pollen collecting on it's middle legs. It was exhilarating to see something this special! I was hooked on journaling from that day forward.

This was truly an eye-opening and enjoyable course for me. I have been passionate about nature my whole life, and I've always had an artistic side, but prior to this course I had never kept a nature journal or engaged in regular nature sketching! I'm inspired to keep going - to bring my journal with me on nature walks, and to take time to sit in nature and just get consumed in its beauty. This year I am also diving into some more mindful birding and ornitherapy experiences, so I'm excited to combine journaling as a regular practice for feeling the many benefits that birds and nature bring us. While I've always had an eye for animal behavior and nature discoveries, I'm ready to slow down and really take it all in and get it down on paper to reflect on it at any time. So far, I think my favorite experience was the sit spot. I felt my senses heighten at every sound, movement, smell, and feel around me. It was so calming and enjoyable and I can't wait to do more. I'm looking forward to trying out these prompts, and really get creative! Thank you, Liz, for this wonderful course!

My best takeaway from this class has been the inspiration to just get out the tools we've been using and get going. I usually take a long time to get something started, but look! I've just put pencil and color to some ideas I've been contemplating, and that's a huge step, really. I don't know if I'll be able to share finished pieces with the group, probably not, but now we get to spread our wings and fly off to do our own things...



I'm looking forward to pulling these ideas together, solving the perspective problems - and having fun with it.

The wow moment of my journaling experience was the moment I started sketching. I could see the difference between my first yellow-billed warbler and today's image. A few of the concepts like nature's curiosity cycle- the observation, questioning, and possible explanation were eye-openers for me. Those concepts of scale, quantity form functions, etc, though I am very much aware as a designer myself, applying them to a nature journal was a novel idea for me. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Actually waiting for a short sit spot in nature to redo all these exercises at one go.

Gesture drawing was really a new skill for me to work on, and I am slowly improving in it. By practicing for a few more months, I think I can get the perfect sketches.

The other thing I would like to share, in this process of learning, I was able to inspire the school children to work on nature journaling and they have started working on it in a very beautiful way. Thanks to this course and Liz.

This course has given me some great drawing tools and direction for my nature journaling.  Now it's time to get outside and keep filling up those pages, despite the cold weather!  My journal page from today:

1. I was delighted with the outcome of this session.  It was a sit-spot session sketching the scene and making colour swatches, finished off later.  I was relieved to get some depth in the colours at last and happy with the perspective ... at last managing the measuring.  2.  I did look at this scene from different elevations before deciding on the elevation that gave the most interesting reflection.  My take-away is for me as much as others - practice skies and keep them wet!

It could sound like a cliché or a hackneyed phrase, but my favorite nature journaling experience was participate in this course, each practice has been like a challenge of  thrilling search, investigation and later drawing for me, so for this last exercise, I tried to make a parallel with one of the most coordinated, scientific and precise teams, who share the same concerns, objectives and philosophy, contributing and expressing each one's point of view, values, conclusions, and united by the same goal. So thank you very much to Bird Academy Team and congratulations, because your teaching methodology, the environment, and the magnifical explanations and drawings (I said WOW!) gets inculcate values, consideration towards nature, feel part of it, and of course, get involved and feel enthusiastic with our own `nature journaling´ projects.

My favorite nature journaling experience was at a pond. I brought two ziploc bags of mixed birdseed (sunflower, millet, milo, etc.) my journal, pencil, and binoculars. There were so many ducks there, hungry and looking for food for the upcoming winter. I had a blast giving them all birdseed and taking pictures of them. I saw so many birds that day, Song Sparrows, Northern Flickers, Spotted Towhees, a Belted Kingfisher and more! That was one of the most fun birding experiences I've had and I highly recommend just getting out there and exploring because you never know what you're going to find. Journaling-wise, the technique I used was Gesture sketching because they (of course) were constantly moving, so I did quick and scribbly sketches that I later added detail to. I also recommend taking pictures, if you want to keep moving and bird/critter watching rather than sitting down and sketching you can just snap a photo and draw it later. I'm honestly a bit sad for this course to end, but I appreciated going on this nature sketching journey and enjoyed it profusely.

My favorite nature journaling experience this year has been the observation of hummingbirds. Since I am now retired, I had the time to observe the ruby-throated hummingbirds during the day  that visited my Turk's Caps. I have seen the ruby throat hummingbird throughout September and into early October. I have not seen them for several days now as they have all migrated further south. I observed the males first with their red throats and then females. I watched them hover as they looked through the panes of my windows, took pictures and sketched from other photographers images. 

My favorite nature journaling was the wow moment when i did the yellow warbler painting again. When I started the course I thought that was one of my best drawings, but now when I see my first drawing of the warbler compared with the final drawing I have noticed so much i learned. In the beginning I thought I knew pretty much but now I see that there is still much to learn in painting.  I have not still tried any journaling ideas , but I will try to do them.  A suggestion for the future students is that even if you are total beginners or very expert this course is for everyone .  I really loved this course.

Recently, I was walking in the woods, and my dog flushed out a deer. All of a sudden, a large doe must have gotten woken up from her hiding place and burst out of a bush at me. To stop it from crashing into me, I hollered, "No!" and it turned and ran up the path.  We were equally surprised. I thought, I am a grandma who almost got run over by a reindeer. It happened too fast to photograph or draw, but I remember the surprised look of the deer as it seemed to put on the brakes while lifting her head pointing her nose in the air, and I remember how large she was. Taller than me and powerful.