Hello friends,
I wrote briefly in my last post about being in a creative slump, and to be honest, I don’t want to talk about that very much right now. What matters is that I feel like I’m coming out of it, and that recovery is partly due to committing to an online monthly nature journaling session.
It’s called The Nature Journaling Circle, created by Alex Boon at naturejournalingcircle.com. He also has a YouTube channel, which is where I first discovered him. His life philosophy is something I identify with, and listening to him talk about nature observation and creating art is genuinely soothing. I feel like I can participate in his courses without needing to perfect the outcome. In other words, I don’t naturally put pressure on myself while I’m participating, which is rare enough to be worth noticing.
This month’s focus was insects and plants. These were U.K. insects and plants, things I’m not familiar with, so there was no pressure to make them look like anything I thought I’d seen in real life. But I will say that Alex fits a lot into a two-hour session. It took me four days to draw and paint the five vignettes, and it wasn’t until Day 2 that I thought, “I should record my thoughts about doing this so I can learn from it.”

So here they are: my thoughts.
First off, I’m not terribly interested in insects. I’ve attempted to draw or paint a few in the past, but not at the level of detail I’d need in order to identify them in the wild. That became my personal challenge: how could I make an image detailed enough to use as an identification aid without spending so much time on it that it became “finished art”?

It wasn’t easy. The first vignette I worked on was far too detailed, and I was definitely thinking of it as finished art. By the third vignette, which I worked on during Day 3, I was really tired of the page, so the detail naturally became less involved. By Day 4, I mostly just wanted to finish.

However, looking at the finished work, I do prefer the first bugs more than the last. So my takeaway is this: in the future, if I’m not especially thrilled about the subject, I don’t have to attempt every example. Three would have been more than enough here. Honestly, I could have been happy completing just the first one.

Here’s another thing I learned, though this is more about how I work: I don’t like copying the teacher exactly.
I followed along with the drawing portion of the lesson so I could see how Alex built the composition, but I made changes when I wanted to. I left out some flowers. I almost didn’t include a second bug in Vignette 3. And because I was spending much more time on the watercolor than he did in the video, I eventually finished watching the lesson and put on background noise while I painted.
That part was very satisfying. I didn’t feel the need to compare what I was doing with how his turned out. I had enough structure to begin, and enough freedom to make the work my own.
I’m pleased with the results. I don’t think I’ll ever be especially eager to draw or paint bugs I see on walks, but you never know. Maybe one of these days I’ll see something interesting and make my own nature journal page for it.
What’s really making me happy is that I spent four consecutive days at the painting table. That’s more time than I’ve spent there in the last five months combined. I don’t know how long this will last, but the pure joy of mixing and swatching colors, putting graphite on paper, and looking at my finished work has reawakened something.
It helped me realize that when I’m stuck in a low spot, I may not need a grand plan, a dramatic reinvention, or a stern lecture from my productivity gremlin.
Sometimes I just need to find a bridge back.