A Year of Nature Journaling Prompts

Local Wildflower: Spot and sketch a wildflower that grows naturally in your area.

Garden Palette: Build a color palette based on what you see in your garden or on a walk. Swatch and mark your favorite colors and what you mixed to get them.

Shadow Play: Draw the shadows cast by flowers, leaves, or plants. Hold the sketchbook steady under the plant where the shadow is falling and sketch over the shadow falling on your paper.

Leaf Shape Study: Observe and sketch a variety of leaf shapes.

One-minute Flower: Set a timer and draw or paint a flower or two in just one minute. Fast and instinctive.

Blind Contour: Without looking at your paper, draw a plant in one continuous line without lifting your pen. Embrace the wonkiness.

Everyday Herb: Sketch an herb you often use in cooking or that grows near you. Include a note on its scent or use.

Monochromatic Magic: Paint using only one color and use its tonal variations to explore depth and contrast.

Zoomed-in Landscape: Create thumbnails of the same scene zoomed in, zoomed out, and from different angles.

Unusual Tools: Create using anything but a brush, pen, or pencil. Try twigs, leaves, q-tips, sponge, or even a flower.

Wildflower Meadow: Paint or sketch a bunch of wildflowers or a field filled with wildflowers.

DIY Ink Sketch: Make your own ink from berries, coffee, onion peels, avocado pit, or earth and sketch something small with it. 

Life Cycle of a Flower: Draw or paint a flower’s different stages from bud to bloom to wilted.

Windy Observations: Observe how plants move in the wind and capture that motion with loose lines or brushstrokes.

Tree Shapes Study: Sketch different tree forms. Focus on the overall shape, thickness of the bark, texture, etc. Can be silhouettes too.

Birds in Flight: Paint or sketch flying birds. (Can be silhouettes, too.)

Painting Foliage: Experiment with different techniques to suggest grass, shrubs, or leafy texture. BONUS: Join Sushma Hegde for this live online lesson where she’ll guide you through it!

Negative Space Painting: Paint around the shape of leaves or flowers instead of painting the object itself.

Same Flower, Three Ways: Choose one flower and paint or sketch it using three different tools or mediums.

Pollinator: Sketch a bee, butterfly, or other pollinator you spot (or from a reference image).

Nostalgia: Painy a flower that reminds you of a childhood memory, book, or place.

Complimentary Colors: Create using two opposite colors on the color wheel, like blue and orange, yellow and purple, or red and green.

Above and Below: Draw a plant or flower as seen from above and again from ground level.

Finger Painting: Use only your fingers to create a nature-inspired artwork. Messy and fun.

One Tree, Many Seasons: Sketch the same tree in different seasons.

Sky Watch: Observe the sky or clouds and paint what you see.

Nature Walk Find: Sketch something you collected or noticed on a walk. It could be a leaf, stone, feather, seed, or something else that brought joy.

Flower Stamp: Apply paint to a flower/leaf and make a print in your journal. 

Color First, Ink Later: Start with loose watercolor shapes, then add details with ink once dry.

Pressed Flower: Add a real pressed flower to your journal.

Repeat Pattern: Create a simple repeat pattern using different elements you sketched or painted earlier this month. Fill a page with your design!