What Would Your Life Look Like if you kept a Nature Journal

• Journey with me through eight months of nature journaling in the video below.
• Are you ready to begin your own nature journal journey??  

Nature Journal with Jan Blencowe from Jan Blencowe on Vimeo.
Note: Click on the 4 arrows icon between "HD and Vimeo"  in the lower right of the video box to watch full screen. Or click on the link directly under the video to watch on Vimeo. 

Q. What would it be like if you kept a nature journal from month to    month, year to year?

Q. What would you learn?

Q. How would you benefit?

Q. What would keep you going, consistently making entries?

A. Personally, I gain an awful lot, more than I ever imagined, and those benefits are precisely the things that keep me going. 

• Nature journaling always fills me with a sense of wonder and amazement. On a daily basis I'm made mindful of the beauties of sunrises, wildflowers, snowflakes and clouds. I'm humbled in the face of storms, inspired at the ability of plants and animals that flourish and thrive in harsh conditions, and filled with hope when I witness the resilience, diversity and adaptability of nature. 

• Through nature journaling I've acquired a deep sense of the natural rhythms of the earth and those have become reassuring, guiding elements in my life, providing a sense of belonging to the natural world, and a sense of being truly at home on our planet. 

• The video above takes you with me through eight months of nature jounraling. The film begins in November towards the end of the season for outdoor nature journaling. You'll see sketches of snowstorms through the window, and yes, even some outdoor adventures in the snow. Winter is a perfect time to visit the natural history museum and sketch from the displays. There are zoo trips, and sketching from a local live stream owl cam in early spring as owlets hatch from their eggs. The snow thaws and it's outside once more. Spring brings new life and abundance and the long days of solstice time allow for unlimited nature journaling possibilities. 

• Are you ready to begin your own nature journal journey??  

Video: Creating Art Journal Backgrounds with Acrylic Ink

Nature Themed Altered Book Flip Through Video

Besides keeping a sketchbook, which often functions as a nature journal, since nature is what I am most interested in, I also have begun keeping art journals and making altered books. The video above takes you through my most recent nature themed, altered book, art journal. 

Click on "altered book projects" at the top of the page to see more altered books I've made. 

Different Kinds of  Journals

So, what's the difference between a sketchbook, an art journal and an artist's journal? Many of these terms have overlapping elements but there are some differences, and people tend to use them in different ways but here's how I define them.

The Sketchbook

A sketchbook is for loose, quick sketches usually done directly from life. The sketches may be in pencil, pen, or also include watercolor, gouache, markers etc. The important part for me is that these sketches are done fairly rapidly and focus on capturing gestural, expressive and emotional content. 

However, you might also have a sketchbook dedicated to longer studies, for the purpose of improving skills and the works in them may actually be considered drawings because of the number of hours spent on them and the level of finish accomplished in them. 

The Art Journal

An art journal is different. The entire thing itself, including the journal as a structure, is a work of art, and each page withing the journal is a work of art in its own right, Art journals typically are created in mixed media with all mediums, dry, wet, collage, print making available for use. I tend to put art journals under the umbrella of book arts. 

The art journal may also have the unique function of being a tool for personal, emotional, and spiritual growth and development. It can be the vehicle for dealing with problems, issues, emotions, questions and serve as the place that we can tap into our inner wisdom and intuitive knowing through art making.  

Altered Books

I also fit altered books in the category of book arts. An altered book being an actual published book that is taken as the basic structure for an art journal, where the book itself is altered and becomes the foundation of the art journal,  

The Artist's Journal

That brings us to the artist's journal, which you might also hear called an illustrated journal or a visual journal. For me that's the broadest category and my "sketchbook" often becomes an artist's journal in the winter months when I have to work in the studio more because of the weather. In addition to sketches from life I may also do some collage, or carve stamps and play around with them in my sketchbook, I might also venture out into other media, or combine media just for fun and play to pass the time in winter. The artist's journal might also take on the role of a place to capture ideas, do thumbnail sketches to work out a larger art project, do materials tests or just jot down "to do " lists or notes etc. 

It's highly likely that unless you are constructing a specific project your sketchbook/journals at times will contain elements of all these types of journals. For example the first altered book I ever made I specifically created to be a sketchbook. I altered the front and back covers inside and out with collage elements and prepared the inside pages with primer and then filled the book with sketches from life just as I would have in any other purchased sketchbook. 

In any art form things can be rather fluid and that is definitely the case with art journaling of any type. The most important thing is to simply be making art as often as possible and not really worry about whether you're doing it "right" or in the "right" type of journal or book. The joy, the benefit, and the magic is in the doing. 

Video: How to Pre-prepare backgrounds in your sketchbook

If you can't view the video here, use this YouTube  link 

Hope you enjoy the video, it was fun to make. If you'd like more videos then tell me in the comments. 

Below are a few recent pages using pre-prepared backgrounds so you can see how that looks, and what the possibilities are.  The F&W acrylic inks from the video were used along with some other types of acrylic paints , all of which were kept very thin. 

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 Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and gouache over a pre-prepared background.

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 Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, Canada Goose studies from life.

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 Pentel pocket Brush Pen, gouache, white Deco marker

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Pentel Pocket brush pen, gouache, white Deco marker

Sketching with Ink Video

One of my favorite places to sketch is the natural history museum. There's one on the Yale University campus about 1/2 hour from me.

If you don't have one near by, a nature center is also a good place.  Usually I'm sketching from the dioramas but this month in conjunction with an exhibit about dinosaur eggs and hatchlings the museum is incubating and hatching  emu eggs! Seems Emu are the closest living relative to many types of dinosaurs.


The Sketchbook 

I'm working in a new sketchbook, a Stillman & Birn Zeta in size A4. That's a standard size that's used in the UK and most of Europe I gather, but it's completely new to me.  It's big which is what I wanted after filling two smallish books over the winter. It's size is 8 1/4 x 11 3/4 which is taller and a bit narrower than the usual 8 1/2 x 11 that I'm used too. It's hardbound and when it's opened flat that means I have 16 1/2 x 23 1/2 to work with and that's A LOT of space!

Ink Brushes

As I've been trying to find my way with the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen I began to get interested in using ink in a water brush to sketch with.  This makes a nice change of pace from using  a fountain pen or marker. I decided to try using some of my favorite fountain pen inks in a water brush. A water brush is a paintbrush with a plastic handle that you can fill with water and use with your watercolors set (so you don't have to drag a container of water around with you) or you can fill the handle with ink or paint or whatever else you'd like to use. 

I like the Sakura and Pentel water brushes and show both in the picture. I also show a Kuretake ink brush that is the same thing but comes already filled with ink, in this case mid-brown #65. The ink is usually thin and I handle it just like a watercolor wash. Sometimes I add water colors to the sketch too. If the ink is not waterproof or at least water resistant then just be careful adding watercolors as things will run and bleed which you might want, otherwise leave a little white paper between areas.


For the emu chicks above I started by sketching with a black marker to get their size, shape, and general pattern of markings. If you click on the image above it will enlarge and you can see how lose and scribbly these sketches are as I found my way in and around their shape and markings) Then I brushed over the sketch with the water brush filled with Lie de The ink which is a pale warm golden brown, the color of a nice Darjeeling tea, thus the name of the ink which translates to tea, or tea colored ink. The ink dries pretty quickly, so I can go right back into the sketch with the Kuretake mid-brown to indicate the darker markings. I waited just a little while for it to dry and then used a UniBall Signo white pen to add the fluffy downy quality of the feathers.

Painting with Ink a Video

If a picture is worth a thousand words than a video is worth ten thousand! I'm sharing with you a homemade video. That means I had to hold the camera with one hand and demonstrate the sketching process with the other hand. All in all I think it came out pretty well given the limitations to filming and sketching at the same time! Please bare with me during the few times the camera is not exactly focused on where I'm sketching. There's plenty of good stuff to enjoy and just a few blips when that occurs. It's free and it's fun and I think you'll find it interesting!