Valentine Love in Nature (MBNJC Video)

Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s that time of the year when signs of spring are in the air in some parts of the world. The birds are starting to sing more in Northern California. Love can be defined as “sustained compassionate attention” (John Muir Laws). So nature journaling can be an act of love for nature.We’ll be sketching some heart-themes subjects and the nature journaling our nearby nature loves.

This week we started our brain training warm-ups with 2-minute sketches to include what we notice and wonder about each photo.

Topic for today:

If love can be thought of as “sustained, compassionate attention”, then nature journaling can be a practice that facilitates a loving connection with nature.

The topic for nature journaling: Nature journal something you love and appreciate. Perhaps a pet, or favorite fruit tree or flower.

If its a rose, perhaps it’s not blooming right now but you can visit the rosebush and see what its doing right now. Does it have bare branches or is it forming new leaves?

What do you notice and wonder? And what else do you notice.

And now, what does it make you FEEL?

Add words, pictures and numbers to your page.

If you are stumped

Step outside (or look out a window). Take a few long slow breaths down into your belly. As you do this, your nervous system will calm and we drop out of our hurried pace and drop into Nature’s pace.

Perhaps close your eyes and listen to the sounds.

Now we are ready to hear Nature!

Move your gaze around the landscape. What captures your attention? What jumps out- or makes you go “Huh, that’s strange/cool/weird”

Go to that. Give it calm, attention and see what else you notice. And start here.

Get to know this piece of nature. Stick with it while you are curious.

Here are my pages from this day:

2-minute sketches with noticings and wonderings. Just for fun, I added color from memory at the end of the session.

I intended to sketch several plants from my garden, but got focused on one. I spend about 45 minutes with my sage. I usually start with metadata (date, time location), then a running list of birds (my personal love), and then sat with the sage, sketches and labels, and list of questions.

Here is the video from today.

Note: the sharing section is not recorded.

#gesturesketches #naturejournaling #quicksketches