I have not yet delved too far into the world of Nature Journaling as I am more artistic than scientific in my approach to the world, but Nature Journaling is such a close cousin to sketch booking, I’m thinking of starting a new sketchbook that will focus on Nature Journaling.

So, what is the difference? With sketching or sketch booking (that term still feels like a twisted grammar to me) the goal is to capture or interpret what your eye is seeing. It can be a variety of things: practice for mastering the skill of drawing, working out compositional issues, doodles, recording of events (like courtroom drama, parades, festivals, etc), recordings of historic events, emotional releasings, etc. etc. 

Nature Journaling is a really intriguing combination of scientific observation and sketching. For example, if I’m watching the birds outside my window, in addition to doing some quick sketches to try and capture them on the page of the sketchbook; I’m going to also make note of things like the date, time of day, how many birds visited the feeder, what they were eating, was the bird molting, does it have a partner? And I’ll ask myself questions and perhaps come up with a theory about why the bird has a particular coloring or why it prefers one seed over another. And I write down all these observations and thoughts.

I’m posting a video I came across of a young man in Northern California who is currently stuck inside due to the heavy smoke. He has done other videos about Nature Journaling but this one was pretty good, I thought. 

So, is anyone else up for a Nature Journaling adventure?