10 Tips: Your Winter Nature Journal
Keeping your winter nature journal can be tough when you live where winters are long and harsh. We’re talking multiple feet of snow and temperatures below 0 F. Difficult but not impossible! I’m going to get you started with a look at 10 ways you can continue your Nature Journaling even in harsh weather!
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Tip #1: Work on Improving Skills
- Practice sketching from photos, your own or online. If you use photos that you’ve found online, make sure you understand copyright laws before sharing your sketches!
- Explore.org is a great online resource full of live video camera feeds from around the world. It’s more like sketching in the field with animals moving rather than a stationary subject in a photo. Perfect for practicing your gesture sketching!
- Take a class! Winter is the perfect time to sign up for that drawing or painting class you’ve been wanting to take. Check local art centers or online sources.
- YouTube is a great resource for free tutorials on drawing and painting techniques. Subscribe to my YouTube channel for videos on general Nature Journaling topics as well as drawing and painting tips, with new videos uploaded every Friday.
Tip #2: Bird Feeders are a Natural For Nature Journaling in Winter
Granted, if it’s super cold outside there won’t be lots of birds but there are a few hardy souls that stick around even in the coldest weather.
A bird feeder or two outside your window will be a favorite hang-out for them! Get out your nature journal and sketch away while they have a snack!
Tip #3: Field Trips
Field trips are a go-to for winter journaling! Find a few local indoor spots where you can get out your sketchbooks in a heated environment.
- Aquariums
- Conservatories
- Natural History Museums
- Zoos with indoor exhibits — my local zoo has indoor exhibits for many of the animals, including big cats, reptiles, insects, nocturnal creatures, and an aquarium.
Watercolors are not an option when it’s really cold out! In winter, I travel light and carry only a graphite pencil and a permanent pen.
Tip #4: Local Nature Programs
Check the events calendars of your local public library, parks systems, and rescue organizations. Many offer programming with live animals in indoor settings in the winter! Even better, find a way to volunteer and get up close and personal with them!
Tip #5: Nature Journal in Winter Around the House!
There is truly nature all around us, all the time. We just take some ordinary things for granted!
- Produce from your kitchen — Yep, ALL sketching will improve your skill-set! So, draw that apple or that pepper before you eat it!
- Houseplants — if you don’t have any, get some! Added bonus: besides being great to work on your drawing skills, they help to clean the stale air in your home if you’re stuck inside during a long, cold winter!
- Grab a bouquet of cut-flowers from your local florist. Choose flowers with different shapes to ready your drawing skills for spring and summer!
- Pets — Live models ready and waiting for you! And they stay still enough for you to sketch them in different positions — well, some of them anyway!
Tip # 6: Field Guides
Most nature lovers have at least one field guide on their bookshelf! Practice sketching your favorite bird, plant, mammal, or tree! Learn their common markings and traits, so you’ll be ready to live-sketch them in better weather.
No field guides at home? Check your public library. They usually have several to choose from.
Tip # 7: Anatomy Books
Although most of us don’t have bird and mammal anatomy books hanging out on our bookshelves, you can find plenty of these at your local public library as well. You’ll be surprised at how much better your live sketches become when you understand how to draw the underlying bone and muscle structure of your chosen subject.
Learn to sketch how a bird’s wing folds and where the feathers lie.
Tip # 8: Taking a Trip to a Warmer Climate?
Are you heading out to visit relatives or perhaps you have a business trip scheduled in a warmer climate? (or at least slightly warmer) Don’t forget to pack your nature journaling kit and take advantage of those spare moments!
Tip # 9: Foraged Items in Your Winter Nature Journal
- Shells saved from your beach vacation
- Interesting sticks, rocks, and twigs saved from your last hike
- Found bird feathers
- Fallen leaves, acorns, and pinecones
All of these items can be sketched in the comfort of your warm home — in your pajamas!
Tip # 10: Practice Hand-Lettering Techniques
Learn and practice new hand-lettering techniques to enhance those journal pages. Once again, online resources abound!
Check out Pinterest and YouTube to find tutorials on every type of hand lettering and calligraphy that you can imagine!
Get my Hand-Lettering for Nature Journalers FREE pdf booklet from the Freebie Library to get started.
Bonus Tip #11: Play Around with Layouts in your Winter Journal
If you’re anything like me, you scroll through Instagram, Pinterest , or your favorite Facebook group, and oooh and ahhh over the amazing (and organized!) page layouts that some of your favorite nature journalers come up with. Study them, copy them, and layout a few pages in advance. Find the layout ideas that work for you.
I’m certain that there are many more ways to continue your nature journaling practice even in the harshest of winters, but these 11 tips are a great starting place! Can you think of any others? Share them in the comments!
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Nature Journaling in Winter
Nature Journaling in winter? Absolutely! With just a few minor adjustments to your tools and routine, winter journaling can be tons of fun and a great learning experience. Today we take a look at the things you need to adjust to make your nature journaling excursion a success.
Nature Journaling Field Kit: Winter Style
How does a winter kit differ from a summer kit? In summer, I carry a small watercolor set with a fillable water brush for adding color to my sketches. Where I live, winters have many days that are below freezing — making watercolors difficult or impossible. So in winter, I switch to colored pencils.
But, how do you carry and sift through all the colors you might need, you ask? Most of the time, I carry only 6 colors — 2 sets of the 3 primaries — one warm and one cool. That way I can create almost any color I might need.
Aside from switching to pencils, I tend to carry pretty much the same things. I do eliminate the small junk book I carry for pressing leaves and flowers. Winter cold makes things too brittle to press most of the time. I also leave the insect repellent at home. Yay! I add a tube of lip balm in its place.
A Change of Clothing
There’s no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.’
~ Sir Ranulph FiennesSo, what to wear out in the field in winter is really the biggest change you’ll probably need to make. Dressing for the weather is really not as difficult as we like to make it!
Keep your core warm, and the rest of your body will be warmer as well. Layers, layers, layers — my mantra for all seasons! No matter what you’re doing, where you’re going, or how long you’re planning to be out, layering is the way to go. As your body temperature and the air temperature fluctuates, it’s easy to add or subtract layers as needed.
Cover your ears! There are not a lot of nerve endings in our ears to register temperature changes; but ears, fingers, and toes are the first body parts to be damaged by prolonged exposure to the cold. Choose thick socks and appropriate footwear. Look for fingerless gloves so that you can sketch, but make sure to cover your fingers when you aren’t sketching.
But Winter is Boring; Just Brown, Gray, and Dead!
Well, . . . OK, I get that. I used to think that too. Used to.
Nature journaling is all about observation and connection, right? For sure, when I’m sitting at home looking out the window, most days are gray, cloudy and lifeless looking. But, trust me, when you get out there and begin to really look, you’ll see a whole different world!
With nature journaling in winter, it’s all about texture. The strong, bright colors of summer might be behind us, but they leave behind the structures of the plants — the parts that were hidden behind all those colors. You get to see the support structures, the seeds and how they were formed. And bonus — all those seeds now become winter food for birds and seed eating mammals. You can get some great sketching time as they come to dine!
Sketching textures can be a challenge, but challenging ourselves is good for the brain! And so what if your attempt at a pinecone is not a work of art! You spent time with that pinecone – observing. Did you hold it in your hand? Turn it over? Did you notice something you hadn’t before? Did you identify the tree it fell from? Congratulations! You’re a winter nature journaler!
Winter Nature Journaling: Yes, Virginia There is Color!
OK, so like we said, at first glance all you see is brown and gray. But, in order to successfully capture that brown seed, you’ll need other colors! Really. Look closely. I’m betting that you’ll see some form of purple in the shadows — not black like you thought. In winter, the light or highlight areas often contain a bit of blue.
Look closely at that mound of snow. Depending upon the time of day, you’ll see blues and purples as well as reflections from sunrises and sunsets.
Look up. There will be breaks in that bleak, winter sky! Sketch the clouds and that beautiful blue surrounding them!
And who doesn’t need practice mixing green colors? The other day, I stood in one spot at a local park and counted at least 5 different species of evergreen trees, all with wildly different coloring! One could spend an entire winter season sketching, studying, and cataloging just those trees and bushes!
So you see, at first glance, nature journaling in winter seems like a boring proposition, but just like nature journaling any other time of the year, it’s all about the closer observation! Are you excited to get out there?
Are you new to nature journaling (in any weather!)? Start HERE.
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