A Year of Nature Journaling Prompts

Daily Nature Journaling Prompts

Let's celebrate nature and put in some “pencil miles”!* Each day this year, create a page in your nature journal based on that day’s prompt. Scroll down for links to more resources for this month’s prompts.

BONUS: Join this month’s host, artist, birder, nature lover, and teacher Sofia Gazarian, for a FREE live online class on 6/28 at 9-10:30am Pacific: Sketching Birds with Sofia Gazarian. Registration required—sign up here!

We can’t wait to see your work! Share it with us by tagging us @wildwonderfoundation using #naturejournalingjune and we’ll share with the community! Tag a friend in your post to invite them to join in the fun!

PS: Looking for prompts from a prior month? Pop to the ARCHIVE at the bottom of this page!

* “Drawing is not a gift—it is a skill. You can learn to draw. You just have to put in the pencil miles.”

—John Muir Laws

Nature Journaling June Prompts

Click on each prompt for additional free resources and/or tutorials. Special thanks to this month’s host teacher Sofia Gazarian.
Be sure to sign up for the special live online free class, Sketching Birds with Sofia Gazarian. Register here!

  1. Design your own icons to record metadata—such as date, time, location, temperature, and weather.

  2. Choose an object and draw it in five different poses or from five unique angles.

  3. Rock-n-draw! 

  4. Turn your observations into comics.

  5. Find and compare objects of the same size.

  6. Beauty in decay. 

  7. Get inspired by nature explorers of the past.

  8. Find a pigeon! There’s always a pigeon outside ;)

  9. Nature layers—Sketch the landscape as silhouettes stacked in visible layers.

  10. Drawing mushrooms.

  11. Spot a bird with a colorful iris or orbital ring.

  12. Food chain—Start with one organism, find out what it eats, and what eats it.

  13. Add watercolor collage to your page.

  14. Draw silhouettes of the birds you saw today, note the differences between them.

  15. Timed sketching exercise—Draw the same subject in 1, 5, and 15 minutes.

  16. Drawing with your non-dominant hand.

  17. Find and study a feather. 

  18. No green today - Draw a landscape and avoid using green in your coloring.

  19. Write a haiku inspired by what you observe in nature.

  20. What bat lives close to your area?

  21. Don’t use pencil in your journal today.

  22. Let’s draw a whole flock! How many birds do you see? Are these all the same species?

  23. Sketching on toned paper.

  24. Observe a bird for one minute, then draw it from memory.

  25. Loosen up! Try a more expressive drawing style in your nature journal.

  26. Plastic pollution—Draw a spot and all the plastic you found there today. Collect the plastic and recycle it.

  27. Don’t forget to add shadows today.

  28. Sketching birds LIVE CLASS! Register here.

  29. Bird’s wing structure. 

  30. Include a self-portrait in today’s journal!

LEARN MORE ABOUT NATURE JOURNALING

ARCHIVE: Nature Journaling Prompts

Click each month to explore the prompts and link to additional resources.