7 Nature Journaling Ideas for People Who Think They Can’t Draw

Fall is one of those seasons that makes people want to pick up a new habit. The sense that the year is wrapping up makes you want to do something new and cozy. Something tactile with their hands.

Nature journaling has been coming up a lot lately, and I think it is because fall is the easiest season to start it in.

The world outside is changing so visibly that you do not need a trained eye or any particular skill to find something worth writing about. You just need to go outside and look.

The thing that stops most people is the drawing assumption.

They hear “nature journal” and they picture a beautifully illustrated sketchbook, someone sitting in a field with watercolour paints, and they immediately think, that is not me. I cannot draw. I have never been able to draw. They close the tab and move on.

This piece is for those people.

All seven ideas here can be done without drawing a single thing. Some of them involve writing, some involve collecting, some involve just sitting and paying attention. I hope these ideas will help you in journaling routine.

What Nature Journaling Is To Start With

A nature journal is a personal notebook where you record what you observe outside. What you record, how you record it, what it looks like on the page, all of that is up to you.

Some people sketch. Some write in long paragraphs, press leaves and tape them in, or make short lists of what they saw and heard.

Some just write the date, the weather, and one sentence about what caught their eye that day. All of it counts.

The term has been around for a long time. Naturalists and scientists have kept nature journals for centuries, recording plants, animals, weather, and seasonal changes as a way of tracking the natural world over time.

But the version most people are coming to now is far less formal than that. It is more like keeping a diary, except the subject is the world outside rather than the world inside your head.

What draws people to it, I think, is that it gives you a reason to go outside and look at things with some intention, and then to write something down. That is the whole practice, and it is much more satisfying than it sounds on paper.

Fall is the Perfect Season for This!!

Everything is changing so fast in fall that you cannot really miss it. One week the trees are still full, and the next time you look up half the leaves are gone.

The mornings feel nothing like the afternoons. Finding something to write about is easy, which matters a lot when you are just starting out and have not yet built a habit of observing.

Spring and summer can feel a bit overwhelming when you are new to this, there is too much of everything and it is hard to know where to focus.

Winter is worth it but it asks you to find the detail in a much quieter landscape. Fall sits in the middle. Things are changing fast enough to be interesting, and the pace of the season gives you time to sit with what you see.

There is also the mental health side of it, which I think is worth mentioning because it is real and it is not talked about enough. Spending time outside consistently has been shown to reduce stress and improve mood, and pairing that with any kind of reflective or creative practice adds to it.

Fall can feel heavy for a lot of people, the days getting shorter, the year winding down. Having a small pleasurable thing to do outside each week changes how the season feels. I say this from personal experience more than anything else.

Starting a new habit in fall also has a logic to it. There is a settling-in energy to September and October, a sense of coming back to yourself after summer. Months are festive, everything with the year is wrapping up, it is a natural time for a small, regular practice.

Nature Journaling for Our Mind

When you sit outside with a journal and you are writing down what you see, something moves in how you are present in that moment. The mind that was running through tomorrow’s to-do list a few minutes ago is now trying to figure out what shade of yellow that tree really is. And this instantly brings your mind to present.

There is research behind this too, and I will mention it briefly because it is worth knowing. Studies have consistently found that time spent outdoors reduces cortisol levels, which is the stress hormone, and improves mood in measurable ways.

Journaling on its own has long been known to support mental clarity and emotional processing.

When you combine the two, the effect is stronger than either one separately.

And not just research, when you are writing down what you see in front of you, you are anchored to right now in a way that scrolling or even reading cannot replicate.

Your attention has a job. It is looking for the next thing to notice, the next detail to write down, and that looking keeps you from drifting back into whatever you were worrying about before you sat down.

I think this is especially true in autumn days, when the season itself has a slightly melancholy quality to it.

Sitting outside with a journal and paying attention to what is in front of you right now, an orange leaf, a yellowish sky in the evening, the sound of wind in almost-bare branches.

It is grounding, it calms the mind, shifts our focus to something connected with the nature even for a while.

And that is not nothing.

All You Need

A notebook and your favorite pen to write with. 🎀

If you want a bit more guidance, a mid-sized notebook is easier to carry than a large one. Something around A5, the size of a standard diary, fits in a bag without being a nuisance. The paper does not need to be anything special, though if you think you might want to add watercolour later, slightly thicker paper is worth having.

A Leuchtturm1917 notebook or a basic Moleskine sketchbook both work well. So does a plain spiral sketchbook from any stationery shop.

I personally love shopping diaries from Mr.DIY store or even Daiso is good, and for online, I loved all my journal supplies I bought from SuppleStore. There you go, free marketing. 🙉

For writing, a pen you are comfortable with is all you need.

I know we all have a preference when it comes to when and even when it comes to different uses. For writing, for light sketching, whichever pen feels like yours.

If you want to add some colour, a small tin of coloured pencils is a low-pressure way to start. Watercolours, special ink pens, a dedicated supply bag, none of that is necessary at the start.

Though these starter pack kind of kits feels so satisfying. No?

But, the simpler you keep it at the beginning, the more likely you are to pick it up regularly.

One thing I would say, try not to buy a beautiful journal and then feel too precious about it to write in. A journal sitting untouched on a shelf helps no one. Something slightly imperfect that you write in every week is worth far more.

1. Start With a Leaf

Pick up a leaf, any leaf, and look at it for a few minutes before you write anything. Turn it over. Hold it up to the light if you can. Look at the veins, the edges, the way the colour is not one flat shade but several slightly different ones sitting next to each other.

Then describe it in words.

Write down the shape and colours you see, and push past the easy words like “orange.” What kind of orange is it. Is it warm, is it brownish at the edges, is there still some green near the stem.

Write down the texture if you touched it. Papery, waxy, crisp, soft, and where you found it and what time of day it was. EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT LEAF.

You can do this with any single object from nature. A pinecone, a pebble, a feather, a seed pod. The point is to slow your looking down enough that you start noticing things you would normally pass over. Most of us look at a leaf and register, leaf. This practice asks you to look for longer than that.

It is also, for anyone who feels nervous about drawing, a very useful exercise in disguise.

When you describe something in enough word detail, you are doing the same work that drawing does.

You are training your eye to see more than the obvious. If you ever do want to try sketching something down the line, you will find your eye has already been getting the practice.

2. Write the Weather Down

Each time you sit down with your journal, write the date, the time, and the weather. Be specific. Do not just write “cloudy.” Write what kind of cloudy. Is the sky one flat grey or are there different layers of cloud at different heights.

Is the light dull or still coming through somewhere. Is it cold enough to see your breath.

What does the air smell like. Is it still outside or is there a wind.

These small observations are the beginning of something called phenology, which is the study of seasonal patterns in nature.

When you record weather and conditions regularly over weeks and months, you start to build a picture of how your local environment shifts through the year. You start to notice things like which weeks the light really changes, when the temperature drops enough that certain birds leave, when the first properly cold morning arrives.

For anyone who feels they have nothing to write about, the weather is the easiest entry point. It gives you a structure, a few sentences you can always write, and then the rest of the entry can grow from there or stay as just those few lines. Both are perfectly good entries.

3. The “I Notice, I Wonder” Way

This approach comes from a naturalist called John Muir Laws, and it is probably the most beginner-friendly framework for nature journaling that exists.

So an entry might look like this, I notice the oak tree at the corner of the park has leaves that are still mostly green while the maple next to it has gone almost entirely red. I wonder whether different tree species turn at different rates or whether it has something to do with how much sun each one gets. It reminds me of something I read once about how maples are always the first to turn.

That is a complete nature journal entry.

Three sentences and five minutes. What makes it useful is that the “I wonder” part is where curiosity lives, and curiosity is what keeps a practice going over time.

When you write your questions down, you find yourself looking more carefully on the next outing, because you are searching for answers to things you already started thinking about.

It also takes all the pressure off, because you are only recording what you noticed and what you were curious about. Neither of those things requires artistic ability or specialist knowledge.

4. Press a Leaf Into the Page

Collect a leaf you like, press it for a few days between the pages of a heavy book, and then tape or glue it into your journal once it has dried flat.

Around the pressed leaf, write whatever feels relevant.

Write details like the location or area where you found it, what tree it came from if you know, what the day was like, what made you pick that particular one. If you feel like writing a short note with memories, emotions, go with it. THAT’S YOUR JOURNAL.

Some write just the date and the location. The leaf is the centrepiece and the words go wherever they fit.

If pressing feels like too much of a process, you can try leaf rubbings instead.

Place a leaf under a page of your journal, hold it flat with your hand, and rub a pencil gently over the paper. The shape and vein structure of the leaf shows through. It looks surprisingly detailed without any drawing involved.

A whole fall season of pressed leaves and rubbings is a lovely thing to look back through.

The actual physical object was there on the page, which gives it a different feeling from a photograph.

5. Sit in One Spot for Ten Minutes

Find a spot you can return to. It does not need to be scenic or particularly special. Anywhere that feels comfortable to you. A bench in a local park, or a corner of your garden, near the tree, whatever calls you. The only requirement is that it is somewhere you can go back to again and again across the weeks.

Sit there for ten to fifteen minutes. Take your journal with you. Write what you observe during those ten minutes.

What is moving and what is still. What you can hear. What birds or animals or insects are present. What the light is doing. What feels different from the last time you were there.

Ain’t it a good and peaceful use of our senses? 🙉

Some nature journalers call this a sit spot practice, and it becomes more interesting the more times you return.

The first morning a particular branch is bare. The week the birds at the feeder change. The day the light starts coming through the trees at a different angle because the leaves have thinned enough to let it.

One visit gives you one entry. Ten visits to the same spot give you a record. The record is where the observing gets interesting.

6. Describe the Colours Around You

Fall is a generous season for this because the colour range is so wide and it changes week by week. What looks like a red tree one Saturday looks different the following Saturday, darker, or browner, or more stripped back.

Sit somewhere with a view of trees and look at the colours around you for a few minutes before you write.

Then write them down in as much detail as you can manage. Push past the obvious words.

Past “red” and “orange” and “yellow.” What kind of red is it. Is it a deep brick red or a brighter one or something that is almost brown already. Is the yellow clean and sharp or does it have a greenish tinge to it. Where does one colour fade into another on a single leaf.

If you have coloured pencils with you, try matching the colours you see by swatching them on the page alongside your written notes.

This is colouring, not drawing. Most people who feel they cannot draw have no difficulty at all filling in a small square with a coloured pencil to show the shade they were looking at.

The more you practise describing colour in writing, the more detail you start to see in the world around you. It is a gradual thing, but it happens.

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7. Try a Phenology Wheel

A phenology wheel is a circular diagram divided into twelve sections, one for each month of the year.

In each section, you record what is happening in nature during that month.

The tree outside your window, the birds you hear in the morning, the temperature range, whether you spotted the first frost or the last butterfly of the season.

Over a full year, it becomes a visual record of how your local environment shifts with the seasons. You can find free phenology wheel templates to print and stick into your journal, or draw a simple circle divided into twelve sections yourself if you want to keep it hand-made.

Starting one in fall means you are beginning at a season of obvious, dramatic change. September, October, and November each feel noticeably different from the one before, which makes the monthly entries easy to fill because there is always something new happening.

It is one of those projects where you find yourself looking forward to the end of each month because you have something to add.

The wheel also solves the “I do not know what to write about” problem across the whole year. You always have a section that needs something. It becomes a companion project running alongside your regular entries, and over time it builds into something you will be glad you kept.

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A Few Questions People Ask

1. Do I have to be able to draw?

Drawing is one option among several. You can write in full sentences. You can make short observation notes. You can print photographs and paste them in. You can press leaves and tape them in. You can make colour swatches with coloured pencils. Drawing is a lovely thing to add if you enjoy it, but the practice works and is worth doing without it.

2. What notebook should I use?

Whichever gives you the right feeling and vibe. A hardback sketchbook is good if you want something sturdy. A basic spiral notepad from a supermarket is fine if you want something unprecious. If you plan to use watercolour, slightly thicker paper makes a difference. For writing, coloured pencils, and pressed leaves, any notebook does the job. We all start with one until we find our type we are conformable with.

3. Does it have to be somewhere special, or can I do this in my backyard?

A backyard, a balcony, a local park, a window with a view of something growing. All of it counts. Nature journaling focuses on paying attention to what is around you, and what is around you is nature wherever you are. A sparrow on a fence is worth writing about as much as anything else.

4. How often should I write in it?

There is no rule here. Once a week is a good rhythm for most people. Once a month is still a practice worth having. Daily entries are wonderful if that suits you. The only real answer is as often as feels good, and as often as you will keep doing it. The journal is not a task you are failing at if you skip days.

5. What if my entries feel dull?

They will sometimes feel dull to write. That is fine. A dull entry that records the date, the weather, and one small observation is still a record of a moment when you went outside and paid attention. Over time, those quiet entries add up into something that feels more interesting in retrospect than it did on the day you wrote it.

Nature journaling asks very little of you.

Some time outside, a notebook, a pen, and a willingness to look at things for longer than you normally would. Most people who try it for a few weeks find that something shifts in how they move through the world outside.

They start noticing more. They start going out with a bit more intention.

They find themselves looking forward to sitting with the journal in a way they did not expect.

Fall is a good season to find out if it suits you, because the world outside is doing so much right now that the subject matter practically finds you.

Take a notebook out with you this week and see what you come back with. 🎀