Even before 2020 I was becoming disillusioned with the increasingly pixel-perfect world of nature photography and some of the practices I witnessed there. So when the pandemic lockdown struck, I decided to go back to my naturalist roots and find new ways to express my love of and curiosity about nature in an analogue format.

Ticking off a list of birds isn’t my thing, so I challenged myself to learn to draw from scratch so that I could document my nature observations more visually. This was a tall order – I have never been artistically gifted and my drawing skills were strictly stick-man level. There was no budding artist in me waiting to emerge! During some online research I stumbled across a Facebook group about “nature journalling” being a thing and eureka! I never looked back.

What is Nature Journalling?

At it’s simplest, nature journaling is about connecting with nature through observation, and capturing your insights on paper. It builds on the long-held tradition of naturalists keeping a field book, log or nature diary to record their notes. It blends that practice with art, diagrams and data visualisation to create a creative, insightful and relaxing hobby.

Nature journalling sits at the intersection of nature recording, writer’s diary keeping and art journals but importantly it is not an art journal, or about creating beautiful artworks. Nature observation and data is the focus and is always included on the page in some way.

Nature journaling as a hobby

Nature journalling was re-imagined by lauded American nature artist John Muir Laws, who coined what I’ve come to call “the three Lawsian prompts” to encourage observing nature, being curious and sparking memory associations to aid learning:

“I notice… 

I wonder… 

It reminds me of….”

Due to its broad appeal, the hobby concept took off and has rapidly expanded to the UK and rest of the world.

The great thing about nature journaling, as opposed to creating regular artwork or art diaries, is that there is zero pressure for artistic achievement, the aim and focus is squarely on experiencing and learning about nature itself, not about producing amazing artwork (luckily for me!).

For me that means nature journalling is all about forming a connection to nature, through observation and then, embracing imperfection, using visual representation techniques as a tool to develop curiosity and to learn as well as to just enjoy being present in the moment, and experience mindfulness, or “flow”.

If you are wondering “I love nature, but can’t do art – is nature journalling for me? The answer is a resounding yes!

It’s the perfect outlet if like me you feel you enjoy being in nature and maybe doing something creative but not artistically inclined or, ahem, talented. You can nature journal even if your drawing standard is stickman diagrams and tally sticks. Messy entries, like muddy boots, are a sign of time well spent.

Because nature jounalling lands squarely in the middle of nature observation logs, written diary keeping and sketch or art journals, it is very flexible and inclusive. Some people may come to the hobby from an art background and emphasise the drawing or painting aspect, others perhaps arriving to the hobby from a scientific or naturalist background may prefer a combination of words (notes, bullet lists, counts, prose or poetry) and diagrams, photos, maps or a even varied mix of everything, scrapbook or bullet journal style.

Different types of nature journal pages

I’m finding it helpful to experiment with different techniques and styles of journalling to see what resonates. The following entries include: tallies with the Lawsian prompts, prose with ink drawing, a count list and pie chart diagram, prose and lists, a phenology wheels (more on those later), tallies with describing sensory observations in words, a sonogram diagram focused on observing sounds opposite botanical field sketches, and a page of bulleted observations in words with a watercolour pencil drawing. The key thing is that a nature journal can contain as little or as much drawing as you like.

Some people like to journal or sketch real time in the field, while others use reference sources or photos back at base, you can even nature journal from your bed looking at the sky or garden out the window. There’s no right or wrong – its whatever works for you. This makes nature journalling a very flexible, creative hobby that is accessible to almost anyone. Also the pencil miles all add up, so no matter where your start point, your drawing accuracy will naturally improve over time with practice, like any other learnable skill. Lastly, there is an incredibly friendly, enthusiastic and supportive community to support you.

I’ve had a few stop and start attempts at getting a nature journalling practice going, trying to find a rhythm, approach and style that works for me as a less artistically capable journaller.

From now on, in this blog I’ll increasingly be sharing the fun I’ve had during my imperfect attempts at journaling my nature observations as well as my photographic highlights. I hope you enjoy discovering nature journalling along with me and seeing my journalling practice grow and evolve over time