Starting your Phenology Journal

If you've longed to have a sketchbook full of nature drawings and observations from your wanderings, this class is for you! This class will help you start your own Phenology Journal. The class will be conducted over Zoom, a free online video platform.

Phenology is the tracking of natural events as they change throughout the year. Recording—and drawing—changes in nature is calming, meditative, and lets you simply stop moving and observe. Keeping a nature journal will grow your observation skills and your art skills. The Phenology Journal will help you regularly find time to slow down, check in with yourself, and immerse yourself in nature. Doing this throughout the year weaves this wonderful practice into your daily life. In this class, we'll share different options for how you might structure your journaling: daily, weekly or monthly drawings. You could choose one journal per year or a journal that you keep returning to year after year. 

For more inspiration, check out artist and naturalist Lara Call Gastringer. Her Perpetual Journal is a spin on a Phenology Journal. Her sketchbook has one page for each week of the year, but she returns to those pages year after year. The drawings get layered over each other, creating a beautiful visual of the variation among years. Find out how to make your own here.

About the Class

Prior to class, artist, scientist, and educator Carolyn Byers will share with you a video that gives you instructions on how to set up your phenology journal—what type of sketchbook to look for, options for dividing pages up, and how to label everything.

Then, during the class period, Carolyn will provide you with tips, techniques, and ideas for creating art, and will help you add your first drawing or painting into your journal. She will also discuss media you can use (pencil, colored pencil, watercolor, etc.) and answer your nature art questions.

Class will be broken into 2 activities:

7:00-8:00 Instruction period, in which Carolyn will provide you with tips, techniques, and ideas for creating art and drawing natural subjects. She will discuss media options (pencil, colored pencil, watercolor, etc.), and answer your nautre art questions.

8:00-9:00 Workshop period, in which if you can spend time on the Zoom call to begin adding your first journal entry, ask Carolyn questions as you go, and see what others are doing. If you would rather opt out of this portion, you can, but the price for class does not change.

Artwork by Carolyn Byers