Summer Art Series: Watercolor Nature Journaling for Beginners

1. Introduction: Summer is here. Longer days, warmer weather, hikes, gardens, cook outs and fun awaited in the months ahead. This is the perfect time to incorporate a nature journal practice into your outdoor excursions. Hi, my name is Monica stood all ski and I'm an artist, online teacher and oracle deck creator living in upstate New York. My work has been featured and sold internationally and my oracle decks of kept me busy in my studio over the last few years. When warmer weather arrives here in upstate New York, It's time to get out of the studio. In the last few years, I've found that I seem to trade one for the other. Either I'm inside my studio working or him outside, hiking or gardening. I'm making more of an effort now to combine the things I hold near and dear and I'm excited to get started and share with you some of the ways you can incorporate nature and creativity. In this first-class of this summer art series, I'll be walking you through the process of keeping your own nature journal. This doesn't have to be a complicated process. In fact, I believe that keeping it simple, we'll make it a more sustainable practice. If you've ever wanted to start a nature journal, this is the place to begin. I'll show you what to pack for your hikes. The things to note when you're outside. And we'll be talking about the supplies you'll need when you're back in the studio and how to create a beautiful layout in your journal from the observations you make on your hike. Once we're back inside, I'll demonstrate a two-page layout in watercolor that incorporates the very flower that I picked on my hike. My hope is that once you complete this class, you'll be inspired to take your supplies on your next outdoor adventure and create a nature journaling practice of your very own. 2. What to bring on a hike: So I am here in my studio and I wanted to talk a little bit about what I take with me when I go out on a hike. And some of the things that I've collected while I'm out on those hikes. And you can see here I've got a pine cone and I have this really cool rock that has all of these crystal formation, which I think is Courts. And I have this little nest. Now, the nests I usually find on the ground, I'm not gonna go into a tree and pick the nests out because you don't know if they're being used or not. Wait until the wind blows them on the ground and then you can take them home, rescue them and feathers. I find feathers everywhere I go. I had this butterfly and it was a whole butterfly and the wind knocked it onto the floor of my studio. I had the window open and my puppy thought it would be a good idea to dissect it. But I managed to salvage the wings, So it kept the wings. And these all make really great, great things that you can sketch from. It's nice to be able to have the actual object in front of you as opposed to drawing from a photograph. So I found this dragonfly. I think I found this at on a trail. Sometimes I find them at rest areas where you parked cars hit them and they're still intact, which is amazing to me. But I mean, look at the wings are just beautiful. So these are real fines. And then I have these beautiful feathers that I've found. This is a Bluejay, the other, then I have these other little sweet feathers. I'm not quite sure where some of these are. But any feathers that I find I keep, my whole house is full of feathers. So this is the fun part about going out for hikes. The things that you find and the photographs that you take in all of the observations that you make. And this is where I store all of my stuff when I go on go on a hike, and I don't typically go out with the intention of sitting somewhere for two hours and painting. If I choose to do that, I'll usually do it in my backyard and I've got a table out there. I can sit outside and grab a flower and sit for a couple of hours and at least be comfortable. When I go out on a hike, I bring this day pack with me and I'm able to put a little pouch that I have right here. And I have this little binder clip to hold my pages. But I have this little pouch and this is the sketchbook. I am not going to bring anything that's heavy or hard to hold. I want to bring something that is easy because I'm gonna be just capturing moments and maybe quickly sketching when we're eating lunch or taking a break. Maybe ten or 15 minutes, something like that. And I want to have something that is easy for me to use. Now this paper that's in this sketch book is meant for dry media. It works okay with watercolor. If you're doing just little watercolor sketches and you're not using a lot of water, then it works just fine. Or maybe you just want to swatch out some colors of your environment and this works perfect for that. I also have a pencil. This is a black wing pencil. I believe. It's got an eraser on the back. I do have a pencil sharpener in the bag as well. This is a brush pen. And the nice thing about brush pens, you can get either a thin or thick line. So you've got variation in just one pen. And I have a mechanical pencil in here as well. Then I have this fun little watercolor travel palette. And there's my pencil sharpener and my binder clip. This is something that I found at Walmart for about $11. And it's perfect to take with you because it's not heavy, it's small, and it has a range of colors. And it also has a little mixing palette here at the bottom. Actually a couple of areas that you can use. And it has this little foamy thing to wipe your brush off on, and then it comes with a water brush. So this is really perfect for, like I said, swatching out colors and in your environment that you see or doing a quick kind of a watercolor sketch of your environment or a tree or a flower, just to kind of grab the essence of what it is that you're looking at. Not so much creating anything that's highly rendered. I would save that for working in my, working in my studio when I get back. And that's the idea behind the field sketches, is so that you have a way to record all of your observations when you're out sketching. You'll be able to record the time and the weather, things that you hear. Use all five senses when you're out somewhere, hiking, take photographs and collect items. Don't forget your bug spray. I have bug spray right here. I usually pick a little smaller bottle. Make yourself as comfortable as you can. Don't weigh down your pack. If you absolutely need to bring a chair or a stool, they make foldable camping stools that you can attach right to the side of this pack. And the other side of this pack has another zippered pouch. And I'll flip this over and show it to you. This zippered pouch holds the water bladder that has a tube. It's a hydration system and it holds a decent enough amount of water for the day. And that's pretty much it. So that is my setup for going out on a hike. I make sure that I've got my art supplies with me and that I am ready to collect my items and take photographs and also note all of my observations when I take a break. So take a look around your house. You've got and it doesn't like I said, it doesn't have to be complicated. It can be very simple. And this bow pouch can not only go with me on hikes, but I can throw this in my purse and keep it with me whenever I want to sketch anything. 3. Supplies in the studio: So here we are and I have some supplies that I wanted to talk about. I have a couple of these nature journals or watercolor journals that we'll be using for our nature journals. And this big one here is brand new. I just bought this and it has a beautiful woman named cover. The pages are £90 and they'll accept watercolor as long as you don't use too much water. So this will be a great way to annotate everything. I can use pencil, I can use a pen, and I can use markers, wet media, the pages are thick enough to handle all of that. Comes with a little bookmark and the pages are nice and smooth. And it's kinda nice linen cover. And it's also got this elastic band that you can wrap around to keep the book closed. But what I really like about it is this pouch that's in the back. So you can keep notes. You can collect some leaves or other plant matter and just tuck it in this pocket back here to keep it nice and safe. So it wouldn't necessarily bring this out with me to sit on a hike because it's too heavy. It would be great to take traveling if I were going to work in a hotel, let's say in the evening, it would packed nicely in the suitcase because it's got a hard back cover to protect the pages. So like I said, I wouldn't necessarily put this in a hiking pack, but it is a beautiful journal and it is 8.5 by 8.5 square. So this is something that I'll be using a lot in the near future. And I'll put the link to this in the description also. So if you're interested in it, you can purchase one as well. Here I have something very similar. It is it's going to Lynn cover, it's 5.5 inches square. The biggest difference between this and the larger one is the paper that's in it. So this is a £140 watercolor paper. So it will accept media that it's going to accept a lot more water. So it'll it'll take everything pretty much. And it's got the same type of little storage pocket in the back, which is handy and it also has the elastic band to keep it closed. And it's got a little bookmark in there too. So here is the watercolors set. You'll see BTUs. And this was just an empty palette that I bought. And I took my Daniel Smith colors and my tube watercolors and filled the empty wells with the paints that I wanted and I just let them dry. And you have your own custom palette. So you'll see I've got a couple of empty spaces in there too that are just waiting for the next colors. But you don't need anything. There's extensive and I certainly wouldn't take this on a hike. This would be the palette that I use when I'm in my studio. And next, this is the little pouch that I take with me. I throw it in my backpack and I have this little travel flip out watercolor palette. And we'll talk a little bit about that when we're talking about packing for a hike. And I've also got some other watercolor palettes that I absolutely love. This is from Metro lab. And I liked this palette a lot because they are porcelain. It's separated by these little felt pads. And it's just really a great travel kit. So if you're sitting on the plane or even if you're out for a hike, you could take this. It's very small and you can fill this with a ton of colors. Then you swatch it out on the little palette card that comes with it. It's a little tricky to get those paints in there from too. But once they're in there and dried the last you for a long time. And it all just fits nicely back into this round tin. And it's got a really secure lids so there's no chance of it coming open. But that's a go-to pellet that I love to use even when I'm in my studio. So we have a couple of different pens here. Both of these create fine lines. You'll need a pencil to sketch as well. And you can really just choose any type of fine line pen or a brush marker works really great too for varied lines. And then here I have some Posca markers. These are paint markers and I liked them because they're opaque, especially this white one. It's super fine tip. It's a 0.7 millimeter. And it's the kind of pen that you have to pump the tip to dispense the paint. So I have that in both white and yellow. And you'll need a watercolor brush and some water and paper towels. And I think that is really about everything that you're going to need for this class. 4. Design Tips: In this section, I'd like to talk a little bit about layout. And what I mean by that is having an idea of where you want to take your nature journal piece that you're getting ready to create. And I know that a lot of people, when they open a brand new journal and they have the blank page looking back at them. It can be intimidating and sometimes paralysis sets in and you're not sure exactly where to go or how to start. And there are so many beautiful journals that we see out there, especially on Pinterest, which is why I have this pulled up. I'm going to show you how you can research some ideas and then use the sketch books that you see online as inspiration. Not copying but inspiration. So you can work in a couple of different ways. Let's say that you're not going to bother with pre laying out your design. So I'm going to draw a thumbnail here, and this will be a two-page spread. So you can work in an organic manner, meaning you can just start drawing out your elements as you want. So let's say that one day maybe I draw a landscape here. And then I add a little animal here that I've sketched. And maybe the next time I come back to it, I want to add a flower over here. And maybe I add another animal element here. So you can do it piecemeal like this and that's absolutely fine. You have to do what works for you and what feels the best. You can go back in and fill in your negative space with things like your date and some text. You can do poems and quotes and just fill in the negative, the negative space. Maybe you can add some swatches on the side and would be the same thing here. Maybe you can add some text that follows the curve of the flower and some more text here. The idea is to fill in these negative spaces so that you have something that looks fairly unified. And you can add another title here. And you can just keep building on your page without any rhyme or reason just as you go. Now, if you would prefer to go into your journal with a plan. And I think that a plan, especially when you have a brand new journal or you're maybe a little bit intimidated by that page. Having a plan is the first way to break through that. So do a little bit of research. And I'll show you here on Pinterest some of the nature journals that I have pinned. And I use these for inspiration as far as layout goes. I'm not copying anybody else's work, but these are a great way to get ideas about what to incorporate into your own journal and how you can take these ideas and make them your own. So let's take this first one here. I really love. Nancy, did you have to ask yourself really, what do I love about this? I love the fact that this plant is taking up two pages. It goes all the way across the page. Maybe I want to do mine at the bottom and I can lay the plant out all the way across the page like this. And then she's got the breakdown of the plant here. What I like about what she's done is she's added some shading around it to make it pop off the page a little bit. So maybe I can add a little bit of a breakdown here. If that's even what I wanna do. And I would put a note to myself that says shadow. And the rest of it is pretty much just text. She does have some swatches here. I prefer my swatching to be a little bit bigger. So I would add in maybe my swatches here on the bottom. And then I would put some text here that followed the curve of the flower. And this would just help to unify this whole piece. And the rest of it, I could fill in with text. Creating thumbnails like this is a great way to keep your layout ideas handy. So I can rip this page out and stick it in one of those pockets in the back of my journals so that if I feel stuck ever, I can go and look at some of these layout ideas. And this is something you can do while you're watching TV at night. You know, just kind of browse Pinterest and make little notes to yourself. I really like this idea. And what I like about it is that it's very simple in its layout and it's a one-page layout. And so all of the elements really are going and a half circle. And then we have a title and some text. And this is a poem. And you don't always have to annotate what's the scientific or what you observe. If you feel like adding a quote or a poem, poem to your journal, it's your journal. You can do exactly anything that you want. So you can add a date here. But these would be the the actual elements. I really love this too. And what I like about it is that the sketching of the flower from different angles or the background for the painting. And again, it's a very simple spread. So like I was saying before, you can fill up front and back a page with little thumbnail sketch ideas for two-page and one-page spreads. So I would just very lightly do something like this. And then we have this goes right off the page. I would just make little notes to myself that this is a sketch. And this is a sketch. This is painted. So that when I'm looking at this in a week from now, I know what I was talking about and then I can you can add in some texts like that. So this is what I would do. Just browse around and see what you can find and create your own little cheat sheet, really. Some other things that you can think about our composition as far as the rules of design go, which include unity and rhythm, pattern, repetition, balance, contrast, which, that's an entirely separate class. But if you are familiar with these ideas and these concepts, it will make your pages a lot more successful. And it's not something that you have to go and spend a lot of time studying. I think if you do your research and you look at other layouts, you'll get the idea. And I have this book here, and I just wanted to show you this as, this book is incredibly old. But back when I was in graphic design, which seems like a lifetime ago. These are the little books that we used and this is a great way to research layouts. You can google graphic design layout and you'll get ideas like this. Even if you just look at layouts and magazines, how they purposely lay out their focal points against text. So this is another tool you can use. If you have books like this or just thumb through a magazine and take note of how the pages are laid out or Google it and make some more thumbnails. You can also create groupings to, I've got a separate journal here. Groupings of things that go together. I think that's a really easy way to start a nature journal. And I have some feathers here. So you have a lot of different options. I can make note of that. In my I could just do grouping just so that I can remember. And something else that you should know is the rule of thirds. If you don't know this. This is just something every artists should know. It's about placing your focal point on a page. So if you break your page into thirds, both vertically and horizontally, wherever these lines intersect, It's the rule of thirds. You want to pick one of these places to place your focal point. And you never typically want to place your focal point dead center. It's just not interesting to the eye and you can do more research on this. But again, you can annotate this and your thumbnails and I'm going to make a copy of this and included. So if you want to print it out, you can stick that in the back of your nature journal as just a little start and then you can add your own as you go. I hope this helps and I hope it helps you open up that page and not be concerned that it's completely white and have an idea of where you're going with the roadmaps that you've created. So with that being said, let's go ahead and get started with our painting. 5. Painting the landscape: So here I'm starting my page by laying out just a really simple and quick sketch, giving myself a little bit of a roadmap as I start my painting. And I'm at this point just confining my sketch to the left side. And you can see the reference photo in the top left corner there that I'm working from. And like I said, this is nothing detailed. This is just a rough layout of the landscape from that day. And I'll go back in and erase some of the lines to that I have intersecting through the trees. Now I've got my watercolor palette out and I am making, mixing up a little bit of phthalo blue and I'm making a real watery puddle. And I'm just beginning to lay in the sky. And I'm painting around those trees so that I can keep those fairly clean until I paint in the local color of the trees. I am going a little bit over the tree line, which doesn't really matter because I'll be adding in some green and it will cover up that light blue. I've got a paper towel and I am soaking up some of the blue and leaving some areas that are lighter in color for indications of clouds mixing up some colors to drop into the river area. And you'll see I'm adding some green, which are the colors for the reflection. And I'll also be pulling out a little bit of the color with a paper towel. And those are those light reflected areas. And here I'm dropping a little bit of blue. And you can see it's a little bit bluer towards the shoreline where I'm sitting. And I'm wiping out that edge just to keep it soft. So I don't have a hard a hard line right there where the river ends. Now I have a dry brush and I'm going in and lifting out some of the paint to indicate those lighter areas and the water that I'm seeing here, I'm just softening up the edge, trying to get the pencil line back the, the form of the rocks that I'm seeing. And now I'm mixing up a little bit of a warmer color, a warmer green. And this will be the treeline that you'll see, which is really beautiful, warm, sunny, green. And I'm just dropping this in. This is wet on dry. And I'm just loosely following the contour of the tree line. And I'm leaving some white edges along the shore just to indicate where the water and the treeline meet. I'm taking some of that same green color that I see and dropping it into the river area. And that area is still a little bit damp. So it's not it's not going to dry with a hard edge. And now I'm going back and picking up a darker value of green. And you can see it's a little bit cooler in temperature as well. And I'm just dropping those in those areas where I see darker masses. So when you're painting something like this, like a tree line, you want to look at it as a whole. You're not trying to paint each individual tree. We're painting this tree line as one mass. And I'm dropping in some other colors that I'm seeing a little bit of. Like a burnt sienna, some darker greens. And now I'm just making an indication of some of these treetops. And you can see I'm holding my brush perpendicular to the page to get a nice point. And I'm only doing this in a couple of areas and make sure that you vary the height of the trees. You don't want a uniform line of trees going across the page. It keeps it interesting. And I just, I think I was trying to lift out some of the paint in the Cloud area. And I'm taking a little bit of a darker mix of that phthalo blue just has less water in it. And I'm adding some darker blue along the top just to add a little bit more contrast into the sky. There, I'm just softening a little bit of the edge of the tree line that I just painted and lifting out some of the lighter areas as well. Here I'm mixing up some Payne's blue-gray. I'll be painting the rocks and I think he makes up a little bit of blue-gray. And I think there's some green in my palette still. So you'll see it's just a very kind of a neutral gray green color. And I'm throwing in a little bit of that Indian thrown blue. And I'm just doing a loose swash over the whole ROC area. And that's what I like about working in these nature journals. It can be anything that you want. You can practice working a little bit looser in your watercolor. There's a freshness to it, an energy to a loose painting that I really love. And this is the perfect place to practice that. Here I just dropped in a little bit of green for the background. You can see I'm not adding in all of those trees in the background. It's just like one dark mass. And I really like the vibrancy of the color in this painting, so I don't wanna do that. And that's something else. Keep in mind. It's your painting, it's your, it's your world. You can make it anything that you want. You can eliminate things, add things. I like to capture the feeling of the day in my paintings. So that's more important to me than being super exact. Now I'm just dropping in a darker value. The treeline is a little bit drier. And that's just to define the shoreline from the water and give it a little bit more depth. And I'll be adding in some of those edges of the limestone that you see. And watercolor always dries lighter. So I'll have to go back in and add this again because it dries it dries too light. I'm just defining some of these areas along the rock edge. Something to keep in mind too. When you're painting off of a reference photo, nobody's going to see the reference photo. So they won't have anything to compare to. So if you get something that's, if you're painting and it's a little bit off, it really doesn't matter. This is your journal. I just mixed up a little bit of this hematite color and it's a somewhere between a gradient at Brown. And what I really like about it is it's a granulating color. So when it dries, you have all of these variations in the paint. And I love using that color for bark. It adds a lot of texture to it without even trying. I'm just laying in a wash of this color all the way down the tree. And I'm not really interested in values yet. I'll do that when this layer dries, I'll add in some darker values. And just loosely adding in some, some branches. And defining the edge with a little bit more paint. I'm adding a little but of extra paint to indicate where I need to go. Once the paint is dry? I think the paints a little bit. I think it's more on the dry side and paints not spreading when I add in a darker value. And I'm just going over and adding some, some clusters of leaves. So the branches aren't super bear. And I just mixed up a little bit of extra green. And I'm just going back in now that the treeline has dried and adding in some of those darker values. Again. You'll see in the right corner on the bottom of the reference photo, there are some leaves from another small Bush, and I'm just loosely adding those in and just making an indication of them. And also adding in the greenery around the rocks and the flowers. This is the golden record that I picked. And it was growing all over the shore. So that's what I wanted to capture and went on loosely add those in and also go back into some of those cracks that I see and adding a darker value. So it defines the rock edge a little bit more. And there I'm just dropping in a little bit of yellow. That's the nice thing about watercolor too, is that while you're waiting for one part of your painting to dry, you can work on something else. So this painting has dried and I stepped away from it. And when I came back, I decided that it would look better if I brought the landscape over onto the other page. It would have a lot more continuity to it. It would look like it was a part of this spread, just not two separate pages. So I'm using the same colors that I used in the river and dragging those out onto the next page over. And I'm doing the same thing with the treeline. And I'm keeping this really loose. It's not gonna be as detailed as the other side. And it really won't matter. My biggest concern was keeping that edge wet so that I could plot it up so it will dry a soft edge. I didn't want to have a hard line. I didn't want the painting to abruptly end. And you can always dampen your brush and scrub out some of that edge and then brought it up with a paper towel. Here, I'm just adding in the same colors that I used on the other side. I'm trying to get it to look like I did this all at the same time. And these are just really opportunities to learn. If you think you made a mistake, it's not. You can always go back and fix it or add to it. And that's one of the things that I love so much about painting and art. And it's a lot of problem-solving. And you're better for it. If you push through and come out the other side. Here, I'm just adding in a darker value to the trees. Now that the trees are dry. And I'm taking the, the point of this brush and I'm just creating some texture in the trees from the lines that I see in the bark. And I'm adding a few more branches, darkening those up a little bit. And the tree is actually sitting right on a piece of limestone. So I was trying to make sure that I annotated that by darkening up that rock. I'm just adding some more value to those rocks and I splattered a little bit of paint for texture. And here I'm going over the edge of the shoreline and trying to add a little bit of a varied edge because it felt like it was too straight to me. So now I'm just grabbing a little bit more of a darker green and adding in those values that I see so that we can make this unified on both pages. 6. Painting flowers: So here we are in the journal again and I am over on the second page. And I'm just making some light marks here to annotate where I want to put everything. So I'll be putting the title in that rectangle at the top, and I'll be also sketching the flower. And you can see right here, I had the idea of sketching out like this bunch of flowers that I came across. And I wanted to add that in. So you'll see I'm sketching it here and then I'm gonna go back and erase the whole thing. So I just decided to add that in kind of free hand really loosely with my watercolors. So I got rid of the whole thing. And now I'm just I'm just going back in. And I'm adding in an extra little circle to denote the center of the flower. And then I'm just sketching the petals and the inside part of the flower. And I'm working from one of the reference photos that I took while I was out there. And I'm just trying to note everything that I'm, that I'm seeing with the pedal. Taking the fact that the top of the petal is a little bit more rounded and where parts of it fall into shadow and the veining in the petals. I'm trying to pay attention to all of that as I'm sketching. The reason that I made that outer ring and an inner ring was to get the proportion correct from the center of the flower to the length of the petals. I'm trying to observe just how these petals grow, how some of them are overlapping. And it's not a completely symmetrical flower. Here. I'm just adjusting the length of the petals and adding in some of the veining that I see. I'll go back in and add in some watercolor. So I'm just lightening up the marks that I made and going into the center and adding the darker color that I see around those inner parts of the flower. And yellow is a little bit tricky to work with when you're adding in shadows. When you add in a shadow on yellow can either push towards a green or a brown. And you know that if you add blue on top of yellow, you get green and that's not really a shadow colors. So it can be a little bit tricky. But this is all just a learning process. And I am going in right now with a, a warm yellow. I think this is my Aussie gold. And I'm just putting in, dropping in some centers where I want the flowers to live. Here. I'm taking some of my lemon yellow and just kind of pulling these petals out from the center and back in again, trying to annotate that they have a rounded top. I'm not being too careful as you can see. This is about creating a loose representation of these flowers. If you make a mistake like I did, the leaves, just the pedals got kinda bunched together. You can always take your paper towel and dab it back out. Now, yellow is typically a staining color on your paper. But if you catch it quickly enough, you can get most of it up. And you can see that not all of the yellow lifted, which is fine with me because I knew that I would go back in and add in some more yellow anyway. So I'm going back in and I'm extending the area of where I want some of these flowers just to add a little bit of variety. So they're not all clumped together. Here I'm adding a little bit of lemon yellow wash to the center flower. The shadow that I put in with the OSCE goal dried. So I just wanted to lay a light wash of yellow across the top of that. Now I'm picking up some of the green and I'm going to start adding in some of that mossy color that I see these flowers growing out of. And I'll start with this initial wash of green. And then I'll go back and add in darker areas to create a little bit of depth. Here I'm going to use my brush to create some leaf shapes. And I'm just doing this randomly. I'm not really paying a whole lot of attention to my reference photo at this point. I kinda like the wild nature of these flowers and how they grow in these clumps. And I just wanted this kind of wild looking patch of flowers laying in those leaves. And then you'll see that all start to pull some stems. I'm just being very careful not to overlap. And if you do do that, if you go over, just take your paper towel and blot it up and then go back in. And I am using a smaller brush at this point, this is a number four round. And you'll see how this all comes together at the very end. Sometimes when we paint, we get to a point which is what we like to call the ugly stage. And we have a tendency not to push past that point. We look at it and get discouraged and then either throw it away or don't go back to it. Well, if you do get to that point, I encourage you keep going. And I guarantee the more that you add, the more elements that you add, and the more you build on a piece, the better it will get. Even if you have to step away from it for a couple of days and come back with a fresh eye. I guarantee you that you'll be able to see the beauty in what you've created. Now here is where I'm going back in with some of this dark sap green and adding in some darker areas to give it a little bit more depth. Now here's the tricky part that I told you about it. I was trying to add a little bit of a shadow to these, these petals without pushing them over to a green color. And it's, it can be a little bit tricky with with yellow flowers. I should have just gone with a golden or a yellow ocher, a deeper yellow color. I think that's when I end up doing towards the end here. I'm adding in a little bit more if that Aussie golden to the center as well. Then I'm just adding in some really quick details into these leaves. And the sepal on this little bud. And darkening up some of the stem areas. And you'll see what you need to darken up when everything dries. And you can have those stems come forward by making them darker and leaving some lighter colored stems. And they'll appear to be the stems and the leaves that are in the background. Here. I'm just trying to basically give the flowers and the stems. Some. I'm trying to ground them into the ground by adding a darker color at the base so that it doesn't look like they're floating out of this grass. I think at this point I'm just kind of going over with a quick wash of water and picking up some of that shadow color that I didn't like. And then I'm dropping in some more. I'll see gold. And I'm just adding a couple of extra little flowers here and there. My hair, I'm going back in with my lemon yellow and doing a real quick wash over these puddles. Nothing to labored, just something very simple. And while that's drying, I'm going into the top and adding in my lettering. And you'll see I'll do a block print. And then I'll go back in and kind of flush out each of these letters. And I do add a little bit of a Sarah at the ends of these letters. Just to make them a little bit more fancy. Lettering can be a lot of fun. You can get a lot of great ideas by just visiting some font websites. It'll give you a good idea of how to vary the serifs on your letters or the spacing, or just really the weight of the letter to. And I'm adding in just a little flower there. And I'm doing this all of free hand. I mean, this isn't something that has to be incredibly fussy. This is your journal and you can clay in this journal and an experiment with different things that maybe you typically wouldn't. I'm just adding it a little bit of a darker wash into the centers of these petals. And then I'm also adding a little bit of extra ACI gold around each of those, those round parts in the center of the flower, just to give it a little more contrast so you can see the separation. While that's drying, I'm going to go back in and pick up some of my yellow and start filling in these letters. And you'll see that I grab a darker color. I think it's the LLC gold, and I just drop that color in to the bottom half of each of the letters. Now if you don't like the pencil lines that you see, you can always take your kneaded eraser and roll it over the writing or any other pencil marks too. Lighten the pencil marks because once you go over it with watercolor, you won't be able to erase it. So just keep that in mind when you're working if you don't like the pencil marks, I don't mind them because this is a nature journal and this is about sketching and annotating things. So I don't, I don't mind the depends on like so. So here I'm going back in and I've got a small number, two, I believe, round brush. And I'm just adding in some of that veining. And it's really not so much of a vein as it is. I think just a little bit of a shadow where the pedals are. I would say it was a crease, not so much a Dane. And I was just trying to indicate that with this little brush. Here, I'm erasing my lines around the flower. I feel like this flower is a little bit lost on the page. So I'm going back in with my mechanical pencil and just defining the shape of each one of the petals. Here, I am winning each one of the petals and just adding a little bit of extra color. So at this point, I have my little flower that I had picked when I was painting at the Black River. And I'm just trying to decide where I want to position it. And you can see I've got a piece of washi tape here and I tape it down. And then a little bit later that washy tapes can disappear because I felt like it was too busy. So I'm deciding to swatch out my colors that I've used in this spread. Swatching colors is a lot of fun. It's a really great way to study your environment too. So there you can see I've already taken the washi tape off and put a clear piece of tape. And I'm just writing the date in there. And what I'm gonna do now is just take my pen into all of those negative spaces that you see. And I'm just going to start filling those in. So I'll start by adding the location. And then I'm going to block print. And I'm just going to talk about the day, basically all of my observations, what the weather was like and, you know, that we had our dog with us and that kind of thing. So I like to vary my I guess my writing styles in the journals. So some of it will be block printing, some of it will be in cursive. Some will be like the title that you see. Kind of decorative. Just have fun with it. So that was a little bit about the day. And then I decided to go back in and do a little bit of pen work around this flower. Just to bring it to life a little bit. I felt like, again, like it was getting a little bit lost on the page. And I wanted to add in some of those details that I saw in the center of the flower. Then I'm going back in and just adding a little bit of detail each of those petals. And don't be afraid to go back in and add some extra things. Sometimes it helps, like I said, to just walk away from it for a bit and then come back with fresh eyes. So I'm grabbing my yellow posca pen and I'm adding a few little bright spots in the middle just to give it a little bit of extra form and a little bit in the petals. And then I'm going back in with a little bit of orange. I could play all day with those, those pens there, a lot of fun. So here I am writing the Latin name for the flower. That's just something that I like to know. And I also go in and add the family name for this flower, Aster ACA. And I also like including the family that it's in. Because when you start studying plants and you become more aware of the family that they're in, Let's say oregano for example. As part of the mint family. You know that when you plant that in the ground, that the potential for it to take over your garden is there because you know, it's the mint family. So I always like to study my plants a little bit. And I'm going back in with my fine tip. White Posca marker. And I'm adding those little glimpse of light that I'm seeing on the water. And it helps to keep these lines straight, keep these angles following the angle of your shoreline. And now I'm going back in and adding in the uses of this plant as far as their medicinal properties, which is another thing that I always am curious about. And you can see right above that I've written in a couple of the common names for golden rag ward. And now I'm just going back in and I added a couple of dots with my posca pen. And she's finished. 7. Wrap Up: Now that you have an idea of what to pack and you can see how simple it can be to create outside. I hope you feel inspired and fill your sketchbook with all sorts of observations. Don't limit yourself to only taking your sketch book on a hike, sit in your own backyard and sketch or create several different types of nature journals. If you grow a garden, you can dedicate an entire journal to your flowers and veggies. Or maybe you love little winged creatures like I do. And you create one dedicated to them. Starting in nature journal practice is really a wonderful way to connect to the earth we live on. And it also provides us with a greater understanding of nature. And I think ultimately ourselves. Also going to include a list of things to include in your nature journal. You can tuck that right in the back of your book along with several different ideas for different variations on your nature journal. Don't forget to invite your children along. The absolutely love collecting and being a part of this journaling process. In fact, get them their own journal. So have a great time creating outside. And thank you again for joining me in this class. I'll see you soon for the next class and this summer art series, Take care.