Nature Journaling Reference Guide for newbies

Video with lots of tips for beginners

When I’m as steeeeeped in nature journaling¹ as I am right now, it’s easy to forget that not everyone else is up to their eyeballs in it.

Then I get emails from students asking some of the very basics—things that I lept over, thinking they were intuitive. But they’re not!

That got me to create a Nature Journaling Reference Guide over the last 2 months, and I hope it is chock full of helpful things that folks can use. Even if you’re not a total newbie, there are a couple pages toward the end that I think would make this little book helpful to tuck into your backpack for ideas while out hiking!

I’ll show you how I painted the cactus - and talk about making this little guide, and how you can fold it up to keep handy for inspiration!

Watch the video below - and if you could, pop over to YouTube to leave a thumbs up to feed the algorithm!

Supplies (affiliate links provided at no cost to you; thank you for using my links and supporting my work!) Image drawn on Arches Bright White Cold Press BLICK | JACKSONS with a TWSBI Eco fountain pen Fine nib. Brush is from Da Vinci’s Cosmotop Spin Brush set BLICK | AMZ The Daniel Smith Watercolors used: Opera Pink BLICK | AMZ | JACKSONS Watercolor Stick - Carmine BLICK | AMZ | JACKSONS Watercolor Stick - Hansa Yellow Medium BLICK | AMZ | JACKSONS and Hookers Green BLICK | AMZ | JACKSONS

About the photo references

I mentioned in the video that I’d post the links to all the reference photos, and, well, that didn’t work out. It’s a lotta links. As I add images to the shop, you’ll get the reference link as well as the drawing and my sample coloring. If there’s a particular one you want the photo for right now, just lmk and I’ll find it for ya.

Nature Journaling Reference Guides

In case the video blasted through these two a little quickly….the color one is on the left, black and white on the right:

Nature Journaling Reference Guide (color) is the one that I believe is most useful to most people. It has one PDF to print out back-to-back in color. (Tell your printer to print 2 sided on the short side or it’ll print upside down.) Fold them in half, and add staples if you wish. You can trim it down to be a smaller book, or let the design have a little more white space around the edges.

Nature Journaling Reference Guide (Color it yourself) has two PDFs in black and white. One can be printed and folded just like the color one - though I’ve never heard of a printer that can not only use waterproof ink but could do 2 sided with heavy paper! If you’ve got that kind of printer, leave a comment and let me know, mine’s not waterproof.

The second PDF is intended to be printed one-sided, and remain unfolded. You could holepunch it, put it in plastic pages, lots of ways to handle it. But please don’t get this one if your printer doesn’t have waterproof toner.

News from the studio

Open Studio is today at noon Pacific time! I do hope you can make it, we’ll be doing a little brainstorming about activities to get people more engaged at Artventure like swaps and challenges!

Dad jokes

A few laughs about prickly pears…..

1. Did you hear about the cactus that went to the party?

2. He spiked the drinks!

3. Why did the cactus cross the road?
   It got stuck to the chicken.

4. What do you call it when a cactus falls over?
   A cactus-trophy.

5. Why do coyotes howl in the night?
   They can only see the cacti in the day.

1. I decided to create a Year-long Nature Journaling course this year, which means making 2-3 new pages per week and posts about them for students, plus 2 videos per month for them too. I think I was a little aggressive thinking this is doable, ha! But I’m having a blast.