Illustrated Nature Journaling

Take your art outside and use simple illustration techniques to capture the beauty of the natural world.

Description:
Learn how to transform your outdoor experiences into beautiful illustrated journals. Artist Gay Kraeger shows you how to quickly sketch landscapes, add expressive watercolor washes, capture movement, and enhance your pages with ink, typography, and design details. Perfect for beginners and seasoned sketchers alike, this course will help you develop a personal, creative practice that celebrates nature.

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Lessons

01: Keep It Simple to Start
Meet artist Gay Kraeger and begin your journaling adventure. Gay shows how to banish those first-page jitters by creating your own loose-leaf pages. Then you’ll head into the field to practice some simple sketching techniques and adding watercolor washes.
20 min

02: Create Landscape Elements Quickly
Get all of your critical landscape elements down on paper with Gay’s speedy techniques. Common household items become handy “machines” for turning watercolors into trees, grasses, clouds, waves, rocks, rust, and dirt. You’ll love these realistic and lovely textures!
29 min

03: Capturing a Landscape
Return to the great outdoors with Gay and learn to identify background, middle ground, and foreground in a landscape, then layer watercolors to recreate the feeling of distance. See how to layer transparent colors, working from the lightest values to the darkest to preserve details.
20 min

04: Adding Depth & Drama With Ink
A few select strokes with black or white ink can add depth and drama to your watercolor landscapes and sketches. Gay shows how to use fine-point permanent markers to create outlines and smaller details, and how to play with wet-erase markers to add shadows to your work.
14 min

05: Capture Beauty & Drama of Water
The purest white in your work is often the white of your paper. Learn a variety of ways to preserve that white as you recreate waterscapes. You can also lift out pigment later or add white with paint. Then explore surface textures, from smooth and serene to dynamic swells and waves.
28 min

06: Capturing Action: Drawing Birds
Capture the fleeting movement of birds in the landscape with Gay’s guidance. You’ll learn some simple strategies for sketching birds on the fly, depicting their essence rather than striving for absolute accuracy. Then see how to turn your sketches into finished works.
12 min

07: Tie It Together With Typography
Pull together your sketches with titles and text to mark the date and remember details of the day. Gay shares lettering techniques and design principles to give your work a balanced and unified look. Finally, add covers and binder rings so you can enjoy your nature journal for years to come!
16 min