That works out well. Me neither!
Who actually determines what a real or good drawing is? Nature journaling is not about drawing. It is about noticing and wondering. Recording ensures that you remember the newly acquired wonder and knowledge better. You can decide for yourself whether, how much and in what way you record it. Recording something is of course useful in a diary.
There is now a (free) app available where nature journalists worldwide share their diary entries.
Among all those notes are incredibly beautiful drawings and written texts. And sometimes I really have to stop the voice of the result-oriented perfectionist. But if you look at my diary entries, I hope you really see that it is not about the drawing. It is about the experience!
That is now ‘easy’ for me to say after a year. Only two weeks ago did I really have the courage to start using my beautiful sketchbook. Yes, also for some ‘messing around’.
If your goal is to make beautiful drawings, you will first have to make a lot of meters. A lot of practice. The nice thing about recording is that you can look back. You see the developments in nature, but you also see your own development. Your own style gradually emerges.
The advantage of participating in, for example, the app is that you get a lot of ideas. Sometimes you copy something. Sometimes you get a completely unique idea. And the participants are actually always nice to each other. Precisely because it is about the experience and not about the result.
As the well-known American illustrator and graphic journalist Wendy MacNaughton says: “You do You”. You often read it with me as: “It is by you and for you” or in my native language: “Het is door jou en voor jou”.