Nature journaling - a glimpse inside my nature sketchbooks

A couple of years ago a started to keep a nature journal/sketchbook. It was mainly a record of things I had seen when out and about and was also a great way to practice drawing without the ‘pressure’ to create a ‘finished’ piece. I got out of the habit of doing it for a while but was inspired to start it up again after discovering a little community of nature journalers on social media. I thought I'd share a few pages from the last couple of years.

A sketchbook is a fabulous learning tool. It's a great way of remembering what you've seen and of getting familiar with any new species you come across. It's also great drawing practice. It gives me the opportunity to draw and paint all sorts of wildlife, not just my usual plants and birds.

While I would absolutely love to be able to sketch things in the field (I’m working up to that!), for practical reasons (and because birds and insects rarely sit still and pose nicely for very long), almost all of my sketches are drawn from the photos I took at the time (although a couple of times I have drawn a ‘nice’ sketch from some (very) rough sketches of birds in the garden). Plants I can do from life, but drawing moving birds/animals from life is a skill in itself and one I'm still a long way from acquiring!

Sketchbook pages can be a lovely record of a trip or encounter. Here's one of my early ones recording the antics of a squirrel in the garden and its close encounter with a Sparrowhawk.

This is my latest page from a trip to our local nature reserve. Whooper Swans are one of the highlights of the winter for me. I didn’t used to include much written detail, but when I look back at my old pages, I find the ones with more written details the most interesting, telling more of the story of the day, so I will try and include more in future.

I actually keep three different sketchbooks, each with a different purpose – perhaps I’ll give you a glimpse inside my other sketchbooks in another post.