Top 5 Tips for Sketching Through the Winter
Outdoors is where the action is when you are a nature sketcher. Yet when the last leaves drop and cold weather sets in, even the best outdoor sketching habits can begin to wane. In years past, my sketchbook often went untouched for weeks in winter. But for the last several years, I have resolved to sketch both inside and out all winter long, and I’ve learned a few things along the way. I’m hoping my top tips will help you keep your sketching habit alive all winter long, too. 1. Over dress,… Read More
Hide and Seek
In springtime, birds tuck their nests into dense foliage and tangled vines. In fall, I try to find as many nests as I can. It is a game of hide and seek in which the birds always win. Still, I walk in woods and fields and along the roadside, taking new paths, looking from new angles, scanning the trees. I count every nest as a victory; a way to understand the place where I live and the creatures that inhabit it. Alas, it is no easy task. Though I think I am… Read More
Nurturing a Sense of Wonder
I’m thrilled to share the news that my book, The Nature Explorer’s Sketchbook, is now available. Geared for ages 10+, it invites kids to begin a lifelong journey of nature exploration with ideas, tips, and plenty of space to sketch. Launching a book makes you think about the people and experiences that were critical to launching you— family, relatives, teachers, friends. People who believed in you; people who were hard on you; or, in my case, people who encouraged me not to hide my sketchbooks in a drawer. My grandmother, more than… Read More
Wind Fall
It’s apple season here in New York; the time for picking apples and drinking cider and making pies. But for sketching, I prefer to leave the perfect apples for others and seek out wild and wind fallen fruit. Like Thoreau, I find almost all wild apples handsome. They are beautiful not in spite of their misshapen and knotted appearance, but because of it. I recently had the honor of being interviewed by Bethan Burton for an episode of the Journaling with Nature podcast. We talk about my approach to sketching, my love… Read More
Last Show
Fall is here, but the final blooms of zinnias and Mexican sunflowers continue in the garden, along with a tangle of scarlet runner bean and cypress vines. I’m hoping that the remaining tomatoes ripen before we get a hard frost. Perhaps there will be one more journal page to mark the end of the season. But just in case, the last of the show seems well deserving of a late season tribute. Tips and Techniques– I could have selected only the finest remaining blooms for this sketch, but it wouldn’t have reflected… Read More
Golden Hour
At 5 o’clock, the sun was already low on the horizon, casting a golden light that would blaze for a short while more and then vanish. After eight hours at my desk, I quickly closed my laptop, picked up my sketchbook, and headed to a nearby preserve to immerse myself in what remained of a perfect fall day. I didn’t walk far before being surrounded by the colors of the season. Dark trunks of old sugar maples cloaked in a perfect glory of yellow, orange, green, and russet lined the old carriage… Read More
Vinalhaven Sketchbook
“I suppose wisdom is to know one’s necessities and not live without them. And this huge silence, with the woods and the ocean together, and the air full of kelp and the sound of the fish hawk and the seagulls and nothing else seems to be something I parish and parch without.” —Margaret Wise Brown, who summered on Vinalhaven from 1938-1952 and authored children’s classics including Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny The Maine coast is, for many, about lighthouses and lobsters, quaint harbor towns and deep blue-green waters. I like those things,… Read More
Fields of Summer
Back in May, I wrote a post about Gardens Wild and Planted, where I wondered whether the home gardener could create anything as lovely as a spring meadow. Here I am again at the end of summer wondering the same once more. I visited this field (and started this journal page) back in July and revisited it last week to see it again (and finish the sketch). My own garden is a fine mix of annuals and perennials, and it has provided plenty of good subject matter for sketching. But it cannot… Read More
Jean Mackay
The Nature Explorer’s Sketchbook
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