I didn’t update my nature journal archive at the end of February, so here are February and March combined. Spring started poking up through the snow during March, and we marked the one-year anniversary of the pandemic that has impacted all of our lives. Meanwhile, the birds press on with their spring migration, the snow melts and color returns to the landscape.
I don’t tend to show my nature journal entries online immediately after I’ve made them. I like the separation of time and space between my nature journaling practice and social media. I am wary of my nature journaling feeling too much like a performance. And so I don’t tend to show my full nature journal pages on social media, only a few details, with the hope that it encourages others to take up the practice.
In March I began an intensive surface design online course called Immersion. One month in, I’m planning my first pattern collection and I know that my designs will be grounded in my direct observations of nature. I’m curious to see how the relationship between my nature journal/field sketching and my vector illustration evolves over time.
I’ll be ending this entry on a sad note. The Brant goose that was the star of my nature journal in January was hit by a car (or so it’s presumed) and killed in Indiana soon after I and many other birders observed the rare arctic visitor in Chicago. Bob Dolgan, a nature journalist of the writing sort, recounts the Brant’s visit to the Chicagoland area and its unhappy fate on his website, This Week in Birding.
