Caryl

I like water color painting and drawing and wanted to get back to them, but also wanted a purpose to what I produced (just my personality), plus ideas of what to paint.  I can compose a story in writing without a second thought, but a blank paper for drawing or painting leaves me asking what I should draw.  I'm a retired Naturalist, so nature journaling was a logical choice to give me the subjects to draw.  And I really want to learn to more about and become better at the "how" of rendering the details on paper of what I see, especially capture the movement and personality of the subject. I like the idea of the economy and effect of using both side of the pages and filling them with text and pictures for a balanced effect.  Decided that free form was more my style than organizing with actual outlined boxes or template structure for each page, other than a heading.   I particularly liked the zoom effect for showing particular details. As a naturalist and in the face of climate change, the lost of nearly 3 billion birds in the U.S. and Canada since 1970s, the ongoing crash of insect populations globally, the unchecked, continued loss of trees and forests, the overpopulation of our planet, the armed conflicts that destroy huge natural areas, and the scientific suspicion that we are living at the beginning of the 6th major extinction era, I want to leave some history behind of how it "used to be."  In addition to my written species inventories, I want to leave an illustrated record about the corner of nature present on my small farm at this point in time, especially its serendipitous moments, and leave my journaling for subsequent owners of the farm, with the hope it continues to be passed on with each change of hands, and perhaps inspires someone along the way to do more to live as a part of nature, not apart from nature.