Your first month of nature journaling
The habit that changes how you see the outdoors. You don't need to draw well, you just need to sit down and look. Here's how the first month actually goes.
By Colin B. · Published June 14, 2026
Nature journaling has a disarming entry point: you sit down somewhere outside, look at something, and write or draw what you see. No experience required. The barrier to a first session is lower than almost any other hobby.
What takes a month is the practice: learning to stay with one subject instead of drifting, learning to notice what’s actually there rather than what you assume is there, and building the sessions into your week often enough that it becomes a habit rather than an occasional outing.
This is what your first month actually looks like.
Week 1: Sit down and look
The single most common mistake beginners make is spending week one buying gear and watching tutorials instead of going outside. Reverse that order. Take whatever pen is in your pocket and whatever notebook is on your desk, find something outside (a weed growing through a sidewalk crack, a bird on a wire, a plant in a pot) and draw it for twenty minutes.
Don’t try to make it look good. Try to notice something true. How many petals does the flower have? Are the leaves opposite each other on the stem or alternating? What direction is the light coming from?
John Muir Laws’s central insight is that the purpose of the drawing is not the drawing: it’s the observation the drawing forces. You notice things when you’re drawing them that you’d walk past in a photograph. The moment you try to draw a leaf’s edge, you have to actually look at it.
Your first week assignment: Sit with one subject per session. Fill the page: drawing, measurements, written observations, questions. “Why does the bark peel in strips?” is a valid nature journal entry. You don’t need answers.
Week 2: Add watercolor and stay loose
By week two, you’ve sat outside a few times and you know what it feels like. Now add one layer: a small watercolor kit and a brush.
The approach that works for beginners is called “line then wash.” Sketch first in waterproof pen, then add flat watercolor washes loosely over the drawing. You’re not trying to paint a realistic picture; you’re adding color notes. “The berry was this particular red-orange.” “The shadow under the log was this cool gray-green.”
A few things that will frustrate you this week:
The watercolor will look nothing like what you see. That’s fine. You’re not matching reality; you’re noting it. A rough color approximation is useful information in a journal.
You’ll want to add too much water. Start with less water than you think you need. A brush that’s damp but not soaked gives you more control than one dripping wet.
The paper will buckle if you’re on a thin sketchbook. This is a problem to solve by upgrading your book, not your technique. Heavy paper (90 lb and up) doesn’t buckle under light washes.
Week 3: Observe more, draw less
This is the week most beginners either deepen or drift. Sessions that feel productive early can start to feel rote. You’ve drawn a few leaves, a bird, a mushroom, and you’re wondering if you’re “doing it right.”
You’re doing it right. The instruction is: go slower.
John Muir Laws recommends spending at least five minutes just looking before you pick up your pen. Sit with your subject. Notice behavior. Where does the bird look when it’s nervous? How does the light change the color of the bark from morning to midday? What’s eating the leaves?
The shift from “drawing what I think is there” to “drawing what is actually there” is the central skill of the whole practice, and it only comes from deliberate slowing down.
A useful tool for week three: a 10x loupe. Looking at a butterfly wing under magnification, or the surface of a mushroom cap, or the seed head of a thistle. It changes what you’re able to record. Detail you couldn’t see is suddenly available.
Week 4: Build the habit
The journalers who stick with this do one thing that drifters don’t: they schedule it. “I journal on Tuesday mornings before work and Sunday afternoons” beats “whenever I feel like getting outside.”
Nature journaling doesn’t require a park or a hike. Window journaling (a bird feeder, a potted plant, the tree in the yard) counts. Five-minute sessions where you sketch just one thing count. The practice scales down as well as up.
By week four, you should have somewhere between 10 and 20 pages of observations. Look back through them. The early pages will look rougher than you remember. The later pages will have things you’ve started to notice that you weren’t looking for in week one: patterns, questions, returning subjects.
That’s the practice working.
Common first-month mistakes
- Drawing from photos instead of life. Photo drawing is its own skill and it’s not nature journaling. The observation is the point.
- Waiting for a “good” day to go out. Overcast light is actually better for observation than harsh sun. Go out on ordinary days.
- Too much planning, not enough sitting. The impulse to read about technique is strong. Reading John Muir Laws’s book is worth doing. But it doesn’t substitute for time outside.
- Comparing your pages to finished journal spreads online. Instagram nature journals are the highlight reel. Every journaler’s early pages look exactly like yours.
What comes next
At the end of your first month, the question is usually about depth rather than technique: which group of organisms do you want to know better? Birds, insects, plants, fungi, and geology are all separate languages with their own field guides, community experts, and seasonal rhythms.
Pick one group and go deep. A serious beginner botanist with a regional plant field guide and a loupe will observe things in a city park that a casual generalist misses in a national park.
iNaturalist is worth adding to your toolkit now. Photograph things you can’t identify in the field, upload them, and the community will name what you drew. It fills the identification gap while your field guide library builds.
Ready to build your kit? See the nature journaling gear guide for the sketchbooks, pens, and watercolor sets worth buying.