Deer diary: Inside the world of nature journaling

Artists, ecologists – and nature lovers with no expertise at all – are turning to this hobby as a way to immerse themselves more deeply in the world.

“It’s almost meditative,” says Sefi George, 29. “Every line you draw to capture a plant, animal, insect or ecosystem is deeply intentional. You add a line here or a dot there, for accuracy. In these moments, it is just you and them.”

A sketch of a Bombax ceiba by Sefi George.

George is an illustrator who teaches ethnography at a design school in Mumbai. Since 2020, she has been spending hours each month drawing birds, bees, ants and mangrove trees.

Her toolkit is simple: sketchbook, pens or pencils, watercolours, “and the willingness to just look for traces of nature around you,” she says.

George has sketched an army of ants hoisting a lizard’s tail left behind by an Oriental magpie-robin on a balcony; carpenter bees drilling holes in wooden structures; a gulmohar tree sprouting new leaves. Most of the sketches are accompanied by little notes: about how a gulmohar blooms or how pollen sticks to the body of a carpenter bee. “I draw to see the nature around me, that may otherwise pass me by,” she says.

The hobby is called nature journaling. It isn’t new; Victorian-era heroines sketched the outdoors seemingly endlessly in romantic and tragic novels of the time.

A page of birds seen at the Doddabommasandra Lake in Bengaluru, as sketched by Debangini Ray.

What’s new is that it’s back. It is a way to separate oneself from one’s screens, George says. A way to engage with nature, even within the glass and greys of our cities (another trend in this direction has been forest-bathing, which involves immersing oneself in a space free of all signs of human habitation; scan the QR code to see our 2019 story on this).

The practice of nature-journaling dates to a time before photography, when intricate sketches were the only way to represent a new species or unfamiliar phenomenon.

In the modern era, it has become popular as an offshoot of doodling and, in recent years, it has gone mainstream. So mainstream in fact that, in 2020, the Brisbane-based artist and environmental educator Bethan Burton began calling on artists and NGOs to observe International Nature Journaling Week (INJW). Using social media to promote the idea, she has been largely successful, with such a week being observed, at least online, each June.

Meanwhile, through the year in India, NGOs and research organisations such as Mumbai’s Coastal Conservation Foundation and Bengaluru’s Science Gallery have been conducting guided nature-journaling workshops since 2021.

“There are no rules. One doesn’t have to be an artist. One can just start with stick figures,” says Gaurav Patil, 30, a marine biologist and illustrator who has conducted five such sessions in Mumbai so far.

Bougainvillea, by Gaurav Patil.

Participants may turn up with watercolours and easels, sketchpads and crayons. Early attempts by Debangini Ray, an urban ecologist and PhD researcher from Bengaluru, have involved crayons, and an intense search for the Oriental garden lizards, barnyard owls and fallen flowers she loved to draw as a child.

“Growing up in Guwahati, in an area ringed by wilderness, I’d spend hours after school looking for Oriental garden lizards. At the end of the day, I would try to draw whatever I had observed. These made for funny crayon sketches, some of which I still have,” says Ray, 29.

When her family moved to a flat in Guwahati and then she shifted to Bengaluru, she held on to that early bond with nature by drawing what she saw around her. “I’m still no artist,” she says, laughing.

Her journals today also depict the insects that she sees in and around her current home, particularly once the sun has begun to set. Alongside sketches of a ladybug, a red cotton stainer and a weevil are notes on how her dog has chased one or terrorised another.

“Unlike a photograph, there is a lot of intent and mindfulness in nature journaling. One is looking at every droplet on a leaf, every curve in a flower’s petals. Chances are, you’ll remember it all better as a result,” Ray says.

A lizard being eaten by an Oriental magpie-robin, and an army of ants, as drawn by Sefi George.

Forest essentials

Sometimes, the journaling can be a way to de-stress from working with nature. Conservation biologist Wasim Akram, director of special projects at the NGO Wildlife SOS, turns to his sketchpad to make sense of some of the rescue missions he undertakes.

“At the end of the day, I find myself wondering how a bird found its way into someone’s bathtub or what that snake was doing on a scooter. I note down these questions, possible scenarios that led them there, and doodle alongside. It helps me collect my thoughts,” he says.

INJW prompts posted online can serve as a starting point too. The themes are typically open-ended: “germination and emergence”, “renewal and regeneration”.

A “growth and development” prompt had George looking closely at one of her favourite trees: the gulmohar. A page from her journal depicts its fiery flowers amid the drab concrete of her neighbourhood. “It’s not a native tree, and is not suited to Mumbai weather. During the monsoon, branches may fall and cause damage,” she notes, beside a tiny illustration of a branch fallen on a bike. “Slowly but surely, small branches and leaves emerge. A year later, it’s back in bloom!”

In this way, nature journaling gets one to pay attention — a good starting point in our world, in our times. “It’s like a secret portal,” George says. “While sketching, I spot so many little details that it feels like there’s a world that’s visible to everyone, and a whole other world that reveals itself only to me. It’s like magic.”