Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie

9781635862287

224 Pages
Publisher: Storey Publishing
Release Date: April 13, 2021

Nonfiction, Arts & Photography, Outdoors & Nature, Self-Help

This is the third edition after the first edition was originally published in 2000. The images and drawings are beautifully done. The author tells us that anyone can keep a nature journal no matter when we live. She gives simple questions to get us started by noticing nature around us and noting anything we see, hear, or feel. She recommends spending 20 minutes outside to change the outlook on the day and of life.

I have been keeping a bullet journal for the past two years and just started a new one for 2021. Sometimes I get bored with it and was looking for different ideas. This book is perfect, and I can see myself using it to change the way I do things and also improving my outlook. It is definitely a way to slow down and be more mindful especially during these trying times. If you are looking for a way to become closer to nature, no matter where you are, look no further than this book. There are so many ideas, something will jump out at you.

For start, this a gorgeous book full of myriad illustrations. Add the numerous how-tos for drawing subjects in nature and this would be a wonderful guide to get started nature journaling. But this book has so much more, including sections on why and how to get started, mindfulness and journaling and detailed guidance for adding nature journaling within a school curriculum including cross-curricular webbing. It’s a book completely packed with information and inspiration, As a daily journaler, I can’t wait to get my hands on a print copy as I think it will be a book to pour over and reference again and again. As a teacher, my mind is filled with ways I could help students make connections in their learning through nature journaling. What a treasure!

Cute and charming aesthic in the pictures and great tips in journaling nature things. Recommended for nature and journal lovers.

Drawing from nature seems difficult, but this book gives you some great tips on how to do it. I’ve always wanted to learn to draw and have felt that my drawings are awful. Using the techniques in this book, I improved my drawings a little bit. It’s not as tough as it looks. Clare Walker Leslie has several books on nature and nature journaling and I have wanted to read her work for a long time. I am glad I finally got one of her books! I will be reading some of the others in the future.

There are exercises that show you how to begin learning to draw, such as doing a blind contour drawing. That is pretty fun. You draw something without looking at the paper and without lifting your pen or pencil. It looks messy when it’s done, but you really can see the shape of whatever you drew in those messy lines! I was surprised at how that worked. Next, the author moves on to show you techniques to draw various natural things, like birds and mammals. Finally, you learn to draw landscape scenes.

I doubt I will ever be a professional artist, but I did find that these techniques worked well. I was able to see that drawings don’t have to be perfect. They are really sketches that convey the idea of the object you are drawing without being photographically accurate.

The whole idea behind the book is to learn to make a nature journal. In it, you can record your observations and make sketches of what you see. Phenological observations help you to track various events in nature over time and you can go back to older journals to make comparisons. This can help document things like climate change and how species are adapting by changes in the timing of their life events.

I think the idea of keeping a nature journal is interesting. The very act of drawing or writing something down really helps solidify the observation and you will remember it longer because you are creating a neural pathway. Studies have shown that hand writing notes helps the note-taker remember longer than just typing them. So, I agree that keeping a record of your nature observations can be very useful to anyone who is studying the natural world.

The illustrations in the book are by the author and her students. They are all excellent. It’s amazing to me that, with a few lines, an artist can convey an image that looks like a rabbit, or a bird, or a tree.

Overall, I found this book full of excellent advice and tips on how to improve techniques. I look forward to trying more of these ideas out when I go on outdoor excursions! I give this book five stars!

Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie is a musthave book for all art and nature lovers. This book is filled with gorgeous artworks and helpful tips. I can't wait to start my own nature journal after reading this.

I'm in love with this book. It's beautiful and inspirational and it makes me happy paging through it. Author Clare Walker Leslie published the first edition of Keeping a Nature Journal in 2000. Through engaging prompts, step-by-step drawing techniques, and images of her own (gorgeous) nature drawings, Leslie guides and encourages the reader to observe and engage with nature through journaling.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS BOOK:
Leslie's approach isn't prescriptive. You do you, and Leslie provides encouragement and tools to help. She tells the reader not to be afraid to draw, and her own artwork is inspirational.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR:
Thoughtful people who look out the window or who go outdoors and want to be better observers of nature.

A stunning book with gorgeous art and helpful notes on using a journal to capture time in nature. I’m a terrible artist, yet this third edition of KEEPING A NATURE JOURNAL gave me hope that I too could chronicle my life in a more meaningful way. I think back on hiking and skiing the Rockies and wish I had such a journal to reflect on. Confirms that what we “see” mindfully makes life so much sweeter — a perfect pursuit during COVID times!

5 of 5 Stars
Pub Date 30 Mar 2021
#KeepingANatureJournal #NetGalley

Thanks to the author, Storey Publishing, and NetGalley for the ARC. Opinions are mine.

I am reviewing a free arc from Netgalley (thank you!)

I knew about this book but somehow believed I had already read a previous edition? Now I don’t think that is true, or if I picked it up in a bookstore previously I must have only glanced through it. This book definitely deserves a more thorough read than that!

The author guides readers through keeping a nature journal by showing many examples of her own work and giving simple tutorials and ideas of what to observe. She stresses that it doesn’t need to be complicated and you don’t need to know everything to begin drawing and learning.

While I am comfortable with drawing and art in general, I feel pretty ignorant about the natural world around me where I live. (I couldn’t name random grasses or most trees ~minus the obvious ones~ or pick out various bird calls at all, for instance.) The author doesn’t make me feel guilty about this and instead offers tips and ideas of things to learn with the changing seasons at one’s own pace.

It seems like something that is actually doable and that is a good thing because maybe I will get outside more this year to draw, even if it’s close to the beginning of the year and currently cold and grey and wet.

Fantastic update to a great book on nature journaling - whether or not one feels they are a good artist. This balances explaining the purposes of nature journaling with great insights on how to teach (and by extension learn) how to nature journal. It's a great balance between sketching and actual journaling with a nature bent. I'm going to recommend it to some friends who work with naturalists.

A beautiful book to help you create your own nature journal. It’s a great way to get back to nature and become more aware of what is happening around us. The book is informative and has many examples of how to develop your journal. A must for nature journal lovers.
Many thanks to Netgalley for the early e book copy.

This edition of Keeping a Nature Journal is definately going in our to be bought pile. Getting outside is one thing but actually exploring and taking in nature isn’t at the top of any outdoors adventurers list. You often find outdoor “tourists” who are just there for the gram not to be PRESENT with the nature.

Learning how to journal is an art. I loved how the author made that clear at the very beginning of the book. You don’t have to be an artist to journal just have to be one with nature.

The artwork and tone of this book were warm and inviting from the very first page. As an outdoor educator, I have helped children keep nature journals. However, I have found that when I have time out in nature by myself I tend to use my phone to snap a picture to confirm an ID later, or simply observed and walked on. There is a time and a place for that, but I would like to make a concerted effort to take the time to make the experience more immersive. I appreciate that the author is clear and adamant from the beginning that nature journaling is for any age, ability, or location. The information is accessible for all but also gives the tools to improve and challenge oneself. This is one I am going to put on my shelf for frequent reference once it comes out!

I love how the book is designed. I enjoy reading the quotes and looking at the uplifting drawings add joy to the reading experience. I'm now fully convinced that I should keep a nature journal as I take a walk in a park every day but do I really see things? I'm sure with my journaling, everything will look new to me. And I'm sure I'll enjoy them years later!
I like how the book gives useful tips to the reader on how to set up a journal. I especially like the observations part as it will remind me to be in the moment. Great book.

Sketching in journals whether it be for urban sketching or nature journaling seems to be all the rage these days. And it's a good thing! It's a marvelous hobby and it can literally change your life! I do what is called art journaling where I document some of my days in mostly pictures and some words.

Keeping a Nature Journal, 3rd Edition is great for beginners or a nature journaler who needs a refresher. You will find many practical tips, tricks and techniques to start with here and you will be encouraged by the author's you-can-do-it tone of voice.

I like that she is not afraid to show some of her not-so-pretty drawings and pages because nature journaling is not about pretty drawings or paintings but more about observation. I loved looking at pages contributed by other journalers too for inspiration and ideas.

In the foreword written by a professor, the word evolution is mentioned. Not everybody believes in evolution and in fact many see the great Creator as they journal about nature and nature journaling for them is a spiritual experience.

Clare Walker Leslie knows what she is talking about because she has kept an art journal for 40 years and has completed 55 journals so far. Aside from that, she has taught nature journaling to many people in many places. She encourages her readers to explore other resources to learn much more than what she presents in this book and has a great list of recommended books, websites, organizations and so on.

This is such a fabulous book! I thoroughly enjoyed reading and discovering how to go about keeping a nature journal. I especially loved the author’s sketches included throughout the book, they were are real treat and inspiration!
I’ve been taking nature photos for years as part of the blipfoto community, but have been looking for something different to maybe compliment it and this is exactly the right book to help me pursue it.
I began reading this arc on my PC which is never a good idea, so when the NetGalley app had had a better update I read it on my tablet and got so much more out of it than I anticipated.
The author starts off exploring the whole concept of a nature journal, basically keeping an eye on the seasons and the weather and how it affects wildlife and the natural world. Then she explains how to go about keeping your own journal by making notes and also how to draw what you see. I’m not an artist by any sense of the word, but this book made me feel that perhaps I could maybe draw something other than a stick man! The easy to follow diagrams have made me very excited about having a go at drawing simple leaves, flowers trees and possibly birds, animals and landscapes!
And this book is not just for adults, but for children as well. There are some wonderful instructions for encouraging children and teachers how to set up nature journaling at home and in the classroom.
I definitely recommend this book if you’d to keep a nature journal or know someone who’d like to . I can’t wait for this to be published next year so I can buy my own copy and start my own nature journal!

This book goes way above and beyond anything you could ask for. It goes into why you'd want to do nature journaling, what supplies to use and what to include, and then offers tutorials on drawing nature elements like birds and trees, tips on doing nature journaling with groups or in the classroom, and tons more. It's filled with gorgeous color illustrations of nature journal pages, along with so much more. It's a huge book that's packed with great stuff. Highly recommended.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

The idea of nature journalling appealed to me greatly – the idea that we could keep a journal with snippets of memories, emotion and information that was illustrated and would result in a beautiful archive of stories. It is a nice idea, but a daunting one. The world is wide, nature is complex and ever-changing. Where to begin? The few sources I found online advised me to be bold and to be unafraid to begin. This is all fine and well. It is true that we need to have courage to begin for anything to actually start. The question is: how do I do this in the first place?

This is where this book comes in. It features easy-to-process information in short paragraphs and covers many topics related to keeping a nature journal (materials, seasons, what to look out for…). These are all accompanied with lovely illustrations by the author that are captivating, and in my case, motivating. Throughout the book, it is mentioned subtly at times that we don’t have to be perfect. Nature journalling is an ongoing process of learning. Our art and techniques can improve if we are consistent in our efforts at nature journalling. (Basically, the secret here is practice.)

Another useful tip I found in this book is the helpful ways to improve our drawing and colouring techniques. There were simple exercises and tiny projects that can be done by anyone from anywhere in the globe (and possibly beyond our tiny planet too).

Nature doesn’t have to be large and daunting and mistaken as only associated with fascinating channels like National Geographic. Nature is all around us, even if we need little reminders that there is a wealth of little worlds to discover in our daily lives. For those who live in places where wildlife is scarce and flora is confined in pots or only line roadsides, surely humans and their lives are a part of nature too? Or we should try to coexist with nature as peacefully as we can? Anyway, a nature journal can be something personal too, if you so choose for it to be.

To sum it up, this is an encouraging book filled with useful information and ways to engage children in outdoor activities through nature journalling. It is a good resource to consider if you are interested in nature journalling or want to learn more about nature (there’s even a handy list of recommended books on nature in the book!) Although the things in this book are American and Europe-centric, the techniques and ideas it mentioned can definitely be used no matter where you are in the world.

This book explains what a nature journal is and how to keep one. You don't need to be an artist or poet to do this, you can just observe and write down what you see around you, either by going outside or observing from a window (great idea in these COVID times). Also nature is not just the trees, animals or birds, it is also us the humans, the weather or the stars in the night sky. The list can be endless.

The first three chapters provide details on the benefits of nature journaling, how to truly observe and conducting a nature observation. It then moves onto how to set up your journal, what materials you might require and suggestions on how to enter observations. Next is an introduction to drawing and provides a number of exercises and how to capture basic shapes, adding shading, perspective and colour.

Chapter 4 is the ongoing journal and provides more examples on what you may wish to record. There is also a list by season about birds, animals, plants, trees, weather that can be observed/

Throughout the book, there are lots of example pages of journals with simple to more detailed drawings and observations to give you some more ideas on what to record. There are lots of ideas for all ages to get going with.

I received this book from Netgalley in return for a honest review.

This is a very special book about keeping a nature journal. The sketches and explanations were very enjoyable and felt doable for the average non artist to attempt.. I found this book to be very relaxing and would use it with my students during their nonfiction unit in English Language Arts. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this free ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Learning about the wonderful world of nature and how to journal it, will instill a life long interest and appreciation for our amazing planet.