Nature Journaling with ballpoint pen

A couple of months ago I experimented with ballpoint pen as the drawing medium in my journal. I had been using graphite. That worked well, and I often only used a mechanical pencil with HB lead. If I wanted it darker I would use some darker 4B or others. Then I'd have to spray it with fixative to keep it from smudging. I had also been using colored pencils, but that is an extremely slow medium.

I wish I could remember what article I read or video I watched that was the inspiration for going to ballpoint pen. But when I tried it I was immediately impressed. You can actually use the same shading technique with ballpoint pen as graphite pencil! When you push harder more ink is released, when you let up the pressure the ink is lighter. This is only for ballpoint; other pen types lay down an even amount of ink whether pressing hard or lightly.

Here are some sample pages.

Because the ink will not smudge I can journal on both front and back pages, unlike pencil (until sprayed with fixative).

Nature journal entry

Some people make an initial sketch in graphite pencil and then ink that. But that doesn't save any time over graphite alone. Rather, start drawing lightly in ballpoint pen (expecting that your first marks will be wrong) and just go with it, strengthening the lines that are correct. It is rather freeing to draw without erasing.

Most of my nature journaling is not done in the field as taught. Rather, I photograph profusely and then draw from photos. In the example following I drew from photos, primarily freehand. For the turkey profile and the one running from page to page I used a grid and pencil sketch to get proportions right.

2-page spread.

Here is a close-up. If you click on the photo and look close you may see a few of those stray barely-visible faint "wrong" lines.

close-up

While the above "finished" drawings took a bit more time, the sketches on the following page were done more quickly. Nature journaling is "not about the art." It is your observations and impressions that matter. The sketches bring back to mind. They don't try to perfectly replicate what you saw. Some of the nature journaling instructional books I have use rather quick, crude, drawings. I'm trying to emulate that quick nature and curb my perfectionism. Some of the time, anyway.

Impressions from my pelagic trip.

One downside of ballpoint pen ink is that it will fade, especially if exposed to sunlight. So it's perfect for a journal.

My first year of Nature Journaling

A little over a year ago I began seriously looking into the nature journaling concept--learning about nature by carefully and deliberately observing and sketching and note taking. I wanted to do something more with my birding than just playing tag by checking off birds from the checklist.

In November 2016 I started with the post: I notice..., I wonder..., It reminds me of... Nature Journaling where I gave a brief overview. I bought materials in December and began sketching in my own journal.

By January 2017 I had bought two books on the subject and wrote a review on the best: Book Review: The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling. The author of this book, Jack Laws, teaches classes and continues to post articles and YouTube videos of his classes. His best video on Nature Journaling as a subject is here: Deep Observation and Nature Journaling. This video predates his book by about 2 years, but is very much an overview of what his book would become. Excellent, excellent, excellent!

As a whole, I've kept the Nature Journaling practice in the manner Jack Laws presents, but personalized it to fit my already-established style of nature observation. The prescribed method would be to take the journal with me and record my observations immediately in the field. However, I find it works better for me to take numerous photos of my nature observations and put down my observations and drawings later at my desk. I sacrifice some immediacy and prolonged observation for more drawing and art time--often creating several drawings for weeks after the field trip.

While Nature Journaling is about recording what you see, and not creating "pretty pictures," I find I'm enjoying the artistic part of it. I did some pen-and-ink drawings many years ago. Now, however, I find that I enjoy graphite sketching and colored pencil artwork. Colored pencil is a very slow and detailed process--perfect for me in the evening in my studio.

Online I have found a highly-skilled artist who teaches colored pencil art (and many other mediums). Lisa Clough of Lachri Fine Arts uses YouTube to great advantage. I've been tempted to sign up as a Patreon supporter for only $4 per month for access to her full-length tutorial videos. But her shorter free versions provide great instruction for now. Her style is "painterly" colored pencil art, blending with mineral spirits and many, many layers. It creates artwork like a painting with photo-realistic detail.

There is quite a quality difference between my recent works and when I started a year ago. In fact, I actually see improvement from piece to piece in recent works. And I can see plenty of room for future improvement. I don't really have a "style" of my own yet in technique or composition. Following are some recent examples of entries into my nature journal.

Page scan 1. Part of a nature journal entry for Dixon Lake.

Page scan 2. Another journal page for a trip to Dixon Lake.

Baird's Sandpiper at Imperial Beach, California. Graphite drawing.

Page scan 3. Quicker graphite gesture sketches of Black-and-white Warbler compiled from rather poor-quality photos.

Black-crowned Night-Heron at Vista, California. Colored pencil painting.
First time using Fabriano Artistico paper.

Roadrunner "field guide" nature journal project

One of the chapters in John Muir Laws' book on nature journaling is "Projects that focus awareness." One of the suggested projects to "focus your observations, enhance your memory, and catalyze your awareness," is to create a "field guide." This is simply a collection of examples of variation within your subject.

I'm still not sketching in the field. But I am taking lots more photos. And I have stopped automatically deleting all but the best shots, as I used to. Instead, I keep the "dud" photos as study specimens for future drawing projects at home.

Thus it is that I completed a page focused on some Greater Roadrunners that I photographed in March at Borrego Springs. One was a series of three photos of a Roadrunner. It was a bit surprised when it first saw me, ran away quickly, but paused one last time to look at me before it disappeared into the brush. The photos were all poor--with harsh background light and the bird itself underexposed. I "saved" one photo [in this previous post] by adjusting the brightness--bumping up the underexposed bird, while darkening the sun-lit sand. But all three photos together created a behavioral timeline. And, interestingly, of all the many illustrations of Roadrunners in all the field guides on my bookshelf, none showed the exact poses I recorded.

Later the same day, a pair of Roadrunners came to inspect our vehicle while Marlene and I were stopped photographing ducks out the window. I suspect the Roadrunners were begging handouts, here at the edge of the campground. I had my closest ever looks at Roadrunners--right down to the fuzzy "hair" sprouting from the head and the long eyelashes surrounding a wonderful eye with golden ring between the iris and the pupil.

Nature Journal page.

Chaparral Trail at Dixon Lake in early February

I arrived just about 8:00 AM, February 8th, 2017, at the parking lot at the entrance of Dixon Lake. On weekdays there is no entry fee. I had an hour-and-a-half before I needed to head to work. Rather than visiting the lake proper, I decided to stay up in the picnic area and chaparral above the north shore of the lake.

The first birds were heard as I opened the car door, before I even got out. A dozen American Robins were there--some already apparently paired up. One of the robins had ugly swollen legs, as several did here last year--probably a scaly mite infection. Several Dark-eyed Juncos were feeding in the lawn, some House Finches were flying about, a Mourning Dove was cooing, and a couple of Yellow-rumped Warblers were working the tops of the California pepper trees that were just getting the first warming rays of sun as they lined the parking lot.

I walked through the first picnic area and down the hill slightly to the adjacent Jack's Creek picnic area. There were fewer birds this morning here, still in shade. A Nuttall's Woodpecker was working the dead top of a sycamore branch.

Nuttall's Woodpecker.

Leaving the picnic area and crossing the road to the north leads to the trailhead for the Chaparral Trail. The mixed chaparral is heavy here. I'm still learning the plants, but laurel sumac and big clumps of chamise were mixed in with several species of evergreen oak trees. This trail follows a creek bed--usually dry, but now was running after several days of recent rains the past two weeks.

There was actually water running in the creek!

A trailside sign identified the oaks and called attention to a "coast wild lilac" but didn't give its scientific name. The three parallel veins running down the leaf identify it as a Ceanothus, but exactly which of the 50-60 species this is I am not sure.

Wild Lilac (Ceanothus spp.) starting to bloom.

Three species of evergreen oaks occur together here. Most of the larger oaks are coast live oaks. A sign brought attention to the more blue-gray smooth-edged leaves of the Engelmann's Oak. Some scrub oak were also present. And in the oaks,... Oak Titmouses.

Engelmann's Oak.

Scrub Oak.

The nature trail goes uphill for almost one-half mile. Near the top I've noted wintering Fox Sparrows in the past but had a hard time seeing them in the riparian tangles of brush and scrub oaks. The loud smacking "tchuck!" or "check!" call told me I was looking for the Sooty Fox Sparrows, or maybe one of the Slate-colored Fox Sparrows, but not the Thick-billed Fox Sparrows, which have a metallic "zink!" call. About 20 subspecies of Fox Sparrows can be divided into 4 groups (including the Eastern Red Fox Sparrows). These 4 groups are long overdue to be split into 4 separate species.

Eventually, I spotted some very pale (pale for Sooties), but evenly-colored Fox Sparrows, with dense breast markings. I obtained two completely out-of-focus and useless photos, and one fuzzy photo that I present here. This probably represents unalaschcensis--the palest of the Sooty Fox Sparrows. It is also the form that breeds farthest north and west--in the Aleutians. Sooty Fox Sparrows have a leapfrog migration, with the northernmost breeders migrating the farthest south. The dark breeding form near Vancouver, Canada barely migrates at all.

Sooty Fox Sparrow -- probably unalaschcensis subspecies

At the top of the nature trail the chaparral opens up into primarily Chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum) interspersed with a few yucca--Our Lord's Candles (Hesperoyucca whipplei). The photo below shows the trail north into Daily Ranch from the nature trail. There is a seasonal pond mid-left in the photo below. A creek exits this pond via a culvert and splashes down the ravine to the right in this photo.

A dead yucca stalk stands as a sentinel over the chaparral.

There haven't been any butterflies out for a couple of months. But this white butterfly with the orange tips to its wings was easy for me to look up and identify--the Pacific or Sara Orangetip (Anthocaris sara). It was perhaps 1-1/2 inches wingtip to wingtip. It even kept its wings open for me for a great photograph!

Pacific Orangetip

At this point I was running out of time, so returned directly down the nature trail again. There were a few of the red-barked Mission Manzanitas, with a few blossoms.

Mission Manzanita starting to bloom.

I then heard a light loose trill and spotted a singing Rufous-crowned Sparrow. After a few moments it came over to investigate me. Of the two photos below, the lower one seems to hold what I view as a more typical pose--short neck, flat head, and long rounded tail. The upper photo is more alert, which gives it an appearance similar to a giant Chipping Sparrow--which it otherwise is not shaped like.

Alert Rufous-crowned Sparrow.

Rufous-crowned Sparrow, typical pose.

In past visits I had noted a "something"--a ball of vegetable matter like a Brillo-pad. I found one again, remembered to get a photo of it, and found the source.

What is it? Wild cucumber.

Wild cucumber.

I believe this is Marah macrocarpus, also known as wild cucumber, bigroot, and chilcothe. It is similar to Marah oreganus, the old-man-in-the-ground gourd I knew in Oregon. It is less common than the similar and widespread Marah fabaceus that has similar common names: California manroot, bigroot.

Nature Journal

My eBird Checklist of this hike.

eBird Hotspot for Dixon Lake.

My previous birding site guide to Dixon Lake (written June 2016).

Mary Beth Stowe's birding site guide to Dixon Lake (written about 2008).

Book Review: The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling

I don't know what caused my recent renewed interest in nature journaling. Maybe my bird watching had become superficial--see a bird, identify it, write it down, take a photo, move on. My link to enjoying birds, and thus nature, had simply become a game of tag--I was playing tag by just naming the birds I saw as fast as I could. I wanted something more meaningful; I wanted a deeper connection with not just birds, but all of the natural world.

However it started, by October of last year my decades-long latent interest in nature journaling reached a tipping point. I began watching nature journaling videos on YouTube and bought a couple of books on the subject. I dug through boxes and found the unopened set of quality colored pencils I had been packing around for years. I went to Michaels art supply store and bought graphite pencils and a sketchbook. I was hooked!

And then, toward the end of December, it arrived: The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling. 2016. John Muir Laws. 303 pages. Heyday, Berkeley, California.

Buy from the author.

Nature Journaling is observing and recording individual organisms in nature primarily by means of words and artwork. Record the date, location, and weather (metadata), and it becomes a simple scientific document. The nature journal can be the foundation for an educational curriculum, teaching science, art, writing and poetry, and mathematics. Or it can just be an enjoyable way to focus your nature observation activities.

Mr. John Muir Laws ("Jack") truly lives up to his famous namesake. And his new book? Fantastic. I studied it cover to cover. And by "study" I mean every day for 21 days I underlined and took notes on every page and followed his art instruction as it pertains to graphite and colored pencils, saving watercolor and gouache for a future time.

Mr. Laws promotes the call to "slow down, observe, discover, and see" with "intentional curiosity." Record your observation in order to...

Notice something you would not have seen;

Remember details you would have forgotten;

Stoke the fires of curiosity and have a tool to explore;

Fall more deeply in love with the [natural] world.

The first 69 pages discuss the nature journaling concept. It discusses different projects one could choose to investigate in their journal, as well as prompts and ideas one could include. Each person's journal is unique, depending upon what they notice in nature and how they respond to it. Mr. Laws stresses that you do not have to be a naturalist or an artist (there's no such thing as an "art gene")--just record and draw what you see and your nature knowledge and art skills ("pretty pictures") will come as an eventual result of practice and prolonged observation and questioning. I love the thought of turning a not-so-good-as-art drawing into a wonderful diagram by adding notes and arrows to it, taking both the attention and the pressure off the drawing, adding density and clarity of information. Every page of Laws' book is packed with examples from his own journals.

Mr. Laws stresses that he struggles with dyslexia. But he doesn't let the sometimes resulting misspelled words shame him from writing in his journal and sharing with others his journal page entries. He thus encourages others to overcome their fear of putting writing or sketches on paper--the writing and artistic skills will develop with practice--anyone can do it.

Page 70 starts a section on the supplies you might want to add to your nature journal field kit--as differentiated from what you might have at home in your "art studio." The emphasis is on easy, quick, and light weight. This allows and encourages you to make quick sketches and notes in the field that you can finish or improve upon later.

Page 84 starts the chapters on nature drawing--an art class! How to draw: Posture, Proportions, Angles. Shading. Color theory (forget red, yellow, and blue as primary colors, it's cyan, yellow, and magenta--just like in your printer). Details. Depth. Contour drawing. Gesture drawing. Negative shapes. Measured drawings. Constructed drawings. Composition.

Then, on page 126 starts media-specific techniques for graphite, colored pencils, ink, water color, and gouache. Laws counsels to find a medium you enjoy and then practice--you don't have to master each medium, though they all begin with a drawing of the underlying basic shape.

Next up, starting on page 154, is How to draw animals, from bugs to salamanders to birds and bears. He covers foreshortening and has many step-by-step instructions. He shows how to create dull and bumpy or smooth and shiny or even iridescent beetles. Slimy salamander skin. Transparent dragonfly wings. Snake scales. Birds from all angles. How to hint at feather groupings rather than drawing every feather so that your bird doesn't turn into a pine cone drawing. He delves into anatomy to show how skin overlays muscles and creates shadows on mammals. How to draw longer fur.

How to draw wildflowers starts on page 220. Trees near and far starts on page 250. Both are covered with the thoroughness of the section on how to draw animals.

Landscapes starts on page 266 with his concept of "Landscapitos," thumbnail landscapes that are fun and fast to add habitat references to your other plant and animal drawings on the page. Rocks. Mountains. Water. Waves. Sky. Clouds. Sunsets. It's all here.

I highly recommend this book!

Who would want this book? Those wanting a closer intimacy with nature, whether already active nature observers or not. Those artistically inclined, wanting to depict the natural world more realistically. Those wishing to receive basic art instruction in nature drawing. Parents of home-schoolers. Grandparents wanting to share art and nature activities with their grandchildren.

Will I keep up this life-changing nature journaling that I have begun? I think so. I hope so. And if I do, I'll have Jack Laws to thank.

Want to explore the Nature Journal idea further? Mr. Laws has a website with blog posts, including many videos of classes he has taught. Nearly everything in the book is in one of these tutorials or videos, but new blog posts and videos are being added constantly. Check it out: http://johnmuirlaws.com

Photographic Nature Journaling: Part 2

In my previous post (click here) I discussed Nature Journaling basics and how I altered it for photography rather than drawing. How did I do in actual practice? Let's find out. For convenience the journal entry proper will be with black font and my self-critique will be with this blue font.

Birding and nature around Lake Hodges
November 13, 2016

It was jacket weather when I started at 7:20 am--55F and wispy clouds covering the sun, but nowhere else. I knew it was going to warm up fast, so I birded near the Rancho Bernardo Community Park and near the car to start. That way I could shed the coat for my longer hike.

Looking south. A view of the partly hazy sky. Cirrus clouds? My meteorology studies in high school were long ago.

Black Phoebe on parallel bars. Rancho Bernardo, California. November 13, 2016. Greg Gillson.

Slightly out-of-focus male Townsend's Warbler. It spent most of its time in the pines and shade.

Orange-crowned Warbler

Olive-colored chevrons on undertail coverts are exclusive to the Channel Islands breeding race of Orange-crowned Warbler-- Oreothlypis celata sordida.

Okay, a decent start. I provide the metadata--date, time, location and the weather--photo and description.

I provide some bird photos, two "pretty," two of lesser quality equivalent to quick sketches with comments on behavior, plumage and identification, habitat. Is a jungle gym in a park habitat? I guess it is.

The leaves on the native sycamore trees were turning golden yellow, orange, and brown and beginning to shed. So I decided to look a bit more closely.

Playground with sycamores. Many of the leaves have already shed.

Sycamore bark is a mottled collage of white, brown, and gray patches.

A minority of sycamore leaves are still green. The three to five pointed lobes remind some of maple leaves.

The spiky seed balls of sycamore

This native tree looks superficially like a widespread ornamental, the sweet gum or liquidambar that is native to the SE US, but planted widely in California. The sweet gum has ridged bark and even spikier seed pods--and, a more colorful red fall leaf display.

The above section does well with a habitat photo, zooming in on the bark, leaves, and seeds. Then I talk about another tree that it reminds me of. This is very definitely what I had in mind as similar to natural history drawings.

The clouds gone and temperatures rising, I left my jacket in the car and continued on.

Looking west from the parking area. Coastal sage scrub habitat.

It has been very dry, with only a couple of brief showers since April. Now that we've reached mid-November, most plants are dead or showing signs of stress from prolonged drought. A few bushes have drying flowers.

One bush was especially proliferous with its cottony flowers. After some research I think it may be Coyote Brush.

Coyote brush?

Close up of flowers

Landscape, bush, flowers--varying the focus on the same item. And I may have identified the previously unknown-to-me shrub.

An archeological discovery here are boulders covered with 500 year old doodles. I couldn't make out any designs, but could see the red ochre color added to the rocks.

500 year old rock "chalk board."

I found a natural piece of colorful art.

Colorful lichens on a rock.

Not everyone considers archaeology part of natural history. But there are some traces here of organisms to pass this way long ago--people. The lichen is a comparison--native rock art versus natural rock art.

Here is a giant thistle-like plant, chest tall and 4 inches across or so.

Unknown flower gone to seed

I noticed and recorded this. I don't know what it is, other than big. Something to watch for later.

I didn't have the trail to myself, but that was okay.

Tracks

I was purposely looking for an example of beauty in nature--light, color, pattern, shapes. I found them here on the trail.

So, here's a question. What's with the microscopic clam shells? This is an old river bank and new lake. Is this dredge spoils from the lake and the clams only are here since the lake was formed? Or are the shells from elsewhere?

Teeny, tiny shells. 1/8 to 1/4 inch.

Ooh, ick! My sand has clams in it!

Jimson Weed? The flower bud is 3 inches long.

Questions are definitely the first part of eventually understanding nature. "A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but without a name it is simply a flower" (Jim Wright and Jerry Barrack, In the Presence of Nature). The correct identification and naming is also essential to understanding nature. Did I name the plant correctly? Perhaps, and I'm building a catalog of plants and other items I've never noticed before. Or perhaps I did notice, but never wrote it down, and soon forgot.

There are patches of prickly pear cactus on the hillsides. But recently several slopes have been planted with prickly pear. In a year or two it may grow thick enough for Cactus Wrens to colonize on this side of the lake the way they have on the north side.

Prickly pear cactus alongside the trail. Looking west across the Bernardo Bay arm of Lake Hodges.

Prickly pear cactus

A Mourning Dove was sitting along side the trail here. Perhaps I interrupted its feeding, but it just sat and looked at me.

Chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum) California Buckwheat is a common plant of the chaparral. It appears dark reddish brown from a distance now, as the flowers are mostly dried up and the plant nearly dormant.

Chamise California Buckwheat

Chamise California Buckwheat

The endangered California Gnatcatcher is frequently found in the heavier chamise along the Bernardo Bay section of the trail.

I observe spider webs. Do the gnatcatchers eat the spiders, or do the bird and spider compete for the same insects? Such questions lead to science happening!

California Gnatcatcher actively crawling and fly-hopping through the bushes, the long tail flipping about. The undertail is black with thin white edges on the side and tips. It is a diagnostic field mark for identifying this gnatcatcher species--one of three species in San Diego County.

I found a couple more California Gnatcatchers down the trail a ways. This time in other weeds.

These weeds look like barbed wire!

By varying the view I have observed a connection from the landscape/cactus patch on through to the dove and chamise buckwheat and then to the gnatcatchers and spider webs. From there I went on to a species account with poses, identification, and behavior. Most of the gnatcatcher photos are not pretty pictures that could stand by themselves. In the past I would have thrown them away (deleted). But as diagrams that illustrate behaviors and plumage characters, they tell an interesting story. And leave many unanswered questions.

Farther down the trail I came upon several oak trees. These are live oaks, either coast live oak or canyon live oak. They are very similar. A list of plants here (see reference footnote) lists only coast live oak.

Live oak along the shore of Lake Hodges.

The leaves are about 1-1/2 inches long, twice as long as they are wide, and rather oval, with sharp points along the edge.

The bark is gray and rough and the trunk gnarled

At another live oak tree I noticed an adjacent smaller oak shrub with little tiny fingernail-sized round leaves. Is this, perhaps, a scrub oak?

The live oak in the center of the frame is about 25 feet tall. The scruffy little bush to the right, barely 8 feet tall is another kind of oak, perhaps scrub oak.

Tiny little round oak leaves. Scrub oak?

Here's another set of tree, bark, leaves including a scenic landscape/habitat view for context.

All along the trail I had been seeing these little piles....

Scat. Feces. Excrement, Poo...

This particular pile of coyote scat included fur, perhaps of rabbit or ground squirrel, plus these fruit pits. Every pile included lots of these pits. But I couldn't see any plants with berries that these could be from. Finally, after hiking about 2 miles, I found such a bush along the riparian edge. Superficially the bush looked like a willow, but with leathery, thick, serrated leaves,... and the berries. Still don't know the name. [11/27/16--This plant is toyon Heteromeles arbutifolia.]

I cut open the fruit with my thumbnail and tasted. It had no real taste that I could discern. Many non-edible fruit are very bitter. This was not. So, this is what the coyotes are eating this time of year... whatever it is. [11/27/16--The shrub is Toyon.]

There are many signs of animal presence in nature without actually seeing the live animal. Tracks, trails, scat, browsing or kill signs, marking signs, dens, shed antlers, dead bodies--all these and more indicate that an animal has passed this way. The dog-like droppings with fur and berries? Coyote. The undigested parts gave a clue, and the fact that it was widespread, yet the source was not immediately evident, made it a mystery to be solved.

So that's it. Or so I thought. I had walked about 3 miles and was back to the car 3-1/2 hours later just about 11:00 am. It was up to 92F, about where the temperature would peak for the day. Then I saw the flowerbeds at the parking lot when getting into my car. I had seen a sign on my hike about endangered local plants. One of them was a kind of mint. Could these flower beds be cultivating endangered mint? I mean, when's the last time you saw mint as a flowerbed ground cover?

This ends with more metadata--distance traveled, time, temperature. And then ends with a mystery: is this mint a deliberate planting of a local rare endangered plant, or just a coincidence?

That's the end then. I thought several of the ideas and photo series lent themselves very well to the Nature Journaling theme and practice. The post is more interesting than simply a single pretty picture or two, but likely too long for a single post. I'm sure it could be broken up into themes. Then again, I won't always devote 3-1/2 hours in the field to this Nature Journaling idea. But I can take a nature break any time when I'm out--especially when I notice nature telling me a story. I now have a methodology to use photography as the main art form for Nature Journaling.

References:

Plants of Piedras Pintadas Ridge, Lake Hodges. James Dillane, May, 1997.

My eBird list for the hike.

My previous site guide to this part of Lake Hodges.