Making a nature notebook painting is easier than making an imaginative painting because it is simply a question of copying what you see before you. Painting from a photograph, however, is not ideal, as photos do not provide an accurate record of true-to-life colors. Therefore, whenever possible, paint specimens that you can look at directly.

To prepare, tape your specimen to a piece of white paper that is preferably the same size as your notebook. Attempt to arrange it in a way that looks natural. Hopefully, you spent time looking at it carefully before you picked it and can now place it in a position that makes sense. Alternatively, you may leave your specimen in a vase. I sometimes use a small espresso cup with a folded paper towel inside to guide the specimen into its most natural position while preventing the flower petals from being pressed into an irregular position. Even with this arrangement, you still need a white background behind your specimen, as its precise color is better seen in this way, and it limits the distraction from other objects.

Next, prop your paper with the specimen against a picture frame or a book or tape it to a wall so that it is a few feet from you. I often place my specimen on the far side of the table I’m sitting at. Take a moment to observe it again. You’ll notice that you cannot see all the details from this distance so you will be forced to focus on the obvious attributes rather than the minute details.

As you look closely, you will begin to see a series of shapes and how those shapes relate to each other. You may notice textures or variations in color. Look for highlights and shadows as well. When you do a picture study, you close your eyes and question whether you have seen everything. That same visualization is useful when creating a brush drawing because once you lay your brush down on the paper, you must commit to the shape you mean to accomplish. In the article “Early Drawing Lessons,” L. Gore explains:

In brush drawing, the simple stroke or sweep of the brush must produce the line or shape required with no previous guiding line or outline. It requires considerable accuracy of eye and control of hand and affords magnificent training in judgment. It is essentially suited to flower-painting and Nature Note-book work. (PR 33, p. 653, emphasis mine.)

The next step is the mix enough paint to complete the entire specimen, ensuring you will not run out of a color in the middle of your painting.

Now, holding your paintbrush, draw the general shape of your specimen in the air until you have the feel of it. Perrin explained:

[T]he great benefit of “Brushwork” being that it can be made quite a moral training in exactness and decision. The children should be carefully taught to make all their mistakes in the air, and not touch the paper or blackboard until the hand is ready to draw fearlessly and with precision the line required. No retouching can be allowed. The old habit of indecision with cramped muscular handling of the pencil, followed by indiarubber was ruinous to all proper development and fostered stammering if not in word, in thought and hand. (Brush Drawing I, p. 345, emphasis mine)

Load your brush with watercolor, and then draw one segment at a time. While the paint is still slightly damp, you can use a brush that has been dried on a paper towel to pull off highlights. You can also add a second layer of the same color paint to depict shadows or areas of darker color. Then leave the paint to dry, avoiding the temptation to fiddle as this will spoil the effect.

Some of Miss Rankin’s most beautiful drawings include a shadow behind and to the side of the specimen, which makes them appear to lift from the page. Of course, to add a shadow, you must wait until your work is entirely dry or you may ruin it. It’s worth noting, however, that Drury did not feel a shadow was necessary. She preferred that students spend any additional time they may have in making another drawing, rather than adding details such as a background shadow. Similarly, in her article “The Approach to Nature,” Miss Downton clarified:

No backgrounds should be painted behind the subject. This will be found quite unnecessary even with white flowers if they are put upon a sheet of white paper while they are being painted. This gives the specimen its true tone values, and even a pure white flower will be found to have green, grey or blue shades in it, so that it may quite well be painted on the white pages of a Nature Book. (p. 338)

Some people will want to leave their painting on the page by itself, and others will wrap their written notes around it. This is a personal decision. It was encouraged that students include a note near the painting stating the name of the specimen, the date it was drawn, and the location it was found. When reading the student-teachers notebooks, I do not always see this information included, but I think it is something we should strive for.

I should also mention that it’s not necessary for you to successfully identify a specimen before you draw it. In fact, I often make a painting before even attempting to make an identification. I come to know the species much better by painting it and therefore can more easily determine if my specimen is the same as the one seen in my field guide. In the end, I can’t always give it a name, but Drury gave us some encouragement regarding our paintings of specimens that we cannot identify: “Conversely, it is delightful when something not known has been painted, to find the name of it unexpectedly years after.” (Nature Notebooks, PR 63, p. 126)

What I do not ever see in the House of Education student-teacher notebooks are the kinds of notes that a scientific illustrator would include around their drawings, such as a bounding box with measurements or a diagram of the anatomical parts. General botany and natural history notes would have been kept in the students’ natural history notebooks, and information about how the specimen was collected would have appeared in a student’s record of that day’s walk.

Your first work may not be all that you would hope for, but your ability will increase with practice as did Miss Rankin’s, and in the meantime, remember that the best way to know something is by drawing it. Albert Einstein said, “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” There is no better way to look deeply than to try to paint something. In one of her reports, Drury pointed out that the “less successful artists” often made fewer paintings that everyone else. But she reminded the students that, “these are studies of Nature even if they are feeble.” (PR 55, p. 78) Thornely agreed. In one report he said, “Perhaps a particular feature of the year is the great excellence of much of the Drawing ; and this is important when it is remembered that it is through Drawing that the Nature Student makes discoveries.” (Thornley, PR 23, p. 227)

So I encourage you to “freely illustrate” your notes as Charlotte Mason said even a small child could do because, as she said:

In this matter of instruction in the things of Nature, we owe yet more to ourselves: for,
         “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her”;––
and, in return for our discriminating and loving observation, she gives us the joy of a beautiful and delightful intimacy, a thrill of pleasure in the greeting of every old friend in field or hedgerow or starry sky, of delightful excitement in making a new acquaintance. (Ourselves, Book II, p. 98)

Resources:
The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature by Cathy Johnson
See the article Notes, part 1 for suggested supplies (including notebooks and paints.)

References:
Downton, M. G. “The Approach to Nature Study.” Parents’ Review, vol. 47, 1936, pp. 333-339.
Drury, Agnes C. “Our Work.” Parents’ Review, vol. 55, 1944, pp. 78-79.
Drury, Agnes C. “Nature Note Books.” Parents’ Review, vol. 63, 1952, pp. 126-128.
Gore, L. “Early Drawing Lessons.” Parents’ Review, vol. 33, 1922, pp. 650-654
Mason, Charlotte M. Ourselves, book 2. Vol. 4, 1905.
Perrin, H. “Brushwork I.” Parents’ Review, vol. 4, 1893, pp. 453-457.
Thornley, Alfred. “Our Work.” Parents’ Review, vol. 23, 1912, pp. 227-228.

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