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Nature Journaling and learning to draw – how do they overlap?
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Yesterday my kids made their first ever entries into their nature journals!
They drew a ruby throated hummingbird, which we’ve been watching a lot lately at our feeders. My oldest is 8 (boy), who has never been very keen on drawing or anything artistic, my next is 5 (girl), who LOVES drawing, but is very young.
Here are the questions I had while we went through this activity:
1) They don’t have any background with instruction in drawing. So I showed them a step by step tutorial on how to draw a hummingbird from this website (which I saw recommended on this forum – thanks!) http://www.How2DrawAnimals.com.
And I let them watch a YouTube video of the same hummingbird sketching lesson. So I felt it really was more of an art lesson than a nature lesson. Should I be approaching this differently? Should I just have them try to replicate a picture of the hummingbird without any instruction on how to do that — focusing more on their careful attention to the photo than on the drawing itself? Obviously a hummingbird moves too quickly to draw it well from a live specimen.
2) They both wanted to add fantasy type elements to their drawings. My son painted a lake down below the hummingbird and drew a little fish (cartoon-like) in it. My daughter drew in her signature smiling sun with sunglasses, and ‘m’ shaped birds in the sky. I know these things are not supposed to be part of a nature sketch, but I had trouble communicating to them why this is so. I ended up feeling like an overbearing micro-manager, trying to tell them what they could and could not draw on their pictures. Any advice as to how I should approach this and how I can convey to them what we are trying to accomplish with the nature journal?
They both really enjoyed it, even my non drawing son, so I feel it was successful. But I want to be better prepared next time. We also learned from the Handbook of Nature Study that hummingbirds eat insects in addition to drinking nectar, which I never knew!
TIA for your help and advice.
P.S. I LOVE this forum. The people here are so very helpful and encouraging. There is so much wisdom here! I have only been part of it for a few months, but I have already learned so much.
We do a few things. First, I remind them that just for this one page (nature journal) they are only allowed to draw what they saw (so no fish in a hummingbird picture if there wasn’t a fish in real life). Why? Because this is our record of things we see. BUT if they desperately want to draw a fish on the hummingbird page then I’m happy to copy their picture for them to do fun things with after they get just the nature journal page done.
We also only do nature journaling about once a week unless they ask, sometimes less. So it is a ‘special event’ that they know has special rules.However we do tons of drawing time for fun, or little lessons on how to draw something. Just about an hour ago, for example, I was at the table with my 3, 4, and 6 year old (the other 5 kids weren’t wanting to draw right then). We pulled out a stack of our drawing books, they flipped through for ideas, and they drew. I did too. And we laughed, changed things because we’re the artist and we’re in charge of our pictures, and had fun. If they asked for help, I helped. But mostly I commented out loud about how I was using a book – “Oh, okay. So now I need to put on the ears.” “oops, I think I will erase that line and try again.”
I also try not to have a drawing lesson for a nature journal page, but I don’t see anything wrong with it if they’re asking. Sometimes they just need help talking through instead. So if they ask – how do I draw the hummingbird I reply, “What parts does it need? It’s a bird, so a head, body, wings, beak, feet. What part do you want to start with? Oh, the body? What shape is their body kind of like? An oval, okay, draw an oval. Now what do you want to add? The head? Great idea. What shape do you want to use for their head?” You get the idea!
I know lots of CM homeschoolers draw birds from field guides (or take a picture and draw them later). It’s very difficult to draw something that’s moving around so much!
How exciting to have hummingbirds in your yard! I was excited to see one in our museum the other day, but it’s just not the same as a real live bird.
Thanks Tristan! Very helpful input.
HollyS – You are right, it is very cool seeing real, live hummingbirds. I guess I take it for granted. I am in Houston, which is on the migration route for both ruby throated hummingbirds and Monarch butterflies, so we get to see lots of these at certain times of year. And, yes, they are WAY too fast to draw while observing live.
My girls (ages 11, 9, 7, and 6) get very stressed out about drawing in their nature journals — they can’t draw like me (not that I’m good — I’m not!! I used to get “Improvement Needed” grades all the time in school!).
So for our nature journals, if they’re stressing out, then I dot or lightly draw the first shape or so to get them started…..or we use a black-line drawing that I pull off the internet and I have them color it life-like and paste it into their journals.
To help with the drawing stress, I bought the Draw and Write through History (I think that’s what it’s called) and one day each week we sit down at the table and they follow the step-by-step instructions to draw whatever goes along with the history lesson. I’ve found that they are getting less stressed by drawing. (Well, one daughter still freaks out over her drawings, but it’s getting better!)
We don’t do near the nature journaling that I’d like to, but my plan is to eventually have a day for drawing something from nature, too, that we’ve seen in the recent past.
So I guess it boils down to me removing the stress from the nature journaling by making it work for us (copies, just coloring, tracing, etc.), And adding an “art lesson” to another subject that will hopefully help us in our nature journaling.
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