A guest post by Berlin-based illustrator and bird enthusiast Maximiliana Martiskova
“You only love what you know, and you only protect what you love.”
This quote by Konrad Lorenz has stayed with me ever since I first came across it a few years ago. If you spend enough time trying to understand, observe, and truly know something, you inevitably develop a bond with it. You begin to care. It stops being meaningless to you, and its fate no longer feels distant or unimportant. The more attention you give to a subject, the more attached to it you become.
In nature conservation, this often becomes a lifelong cycle that creates deeply devoted people: the more you know, the more you care, and the more you care, the more you wish to know.
For me, nature journaling is one of the most powerful ways to truly know the world around you. It teaches patience, curiosity, and attention. It reminds you that observation is a skill, not simply a talent some people are born with. And more than anything, it is one of the best ways to introduce yourself to nature on a deeper and more personal level.
What Is – and What Isn’t – Nature Journaling?
Nature journaling bridges art and science, combining observation with the practice of drawing. It can take many different forms – artistic, educational, sometimes almost scientific – and ideally, all of these overlap at the same time.
One of the biggest misconceptions beginners have is that nature journaling is plein-air outdoor painting and that it is supposed to produce beautiful finished artwork.
People often imagine polished watercolor pages, perfect handwriting, tidy layouts, and detailed illustrations that look ready for publication.
In reality, that is usually not what happens in the field!
Professional nature journalers often use photo equipment that allows them to zoom in on a screen and continue painting their subject while sitting outside. For the rest of us, the results of nature journaling are often a developed drawing of the environment (at least the parts that do not move or fly away), accompanied by a few small bird sketches and scattered notes from brief moments of observation.
A nature journal does not need to look beautiful or polished – it needs to be rich with information, experience, and evidence of your learning.
But the artistic side is not all there is to a nature journal – the observational and scientific aspects play an equally important role.
If you study something that genuinely interests you, you are far more likely to observe openly, which often leads to deeper and more honest observations. Many of my own pages where I struggled to stay interested are the ones that now feel the most empty to look back on. I could never push myself to observe beyond the surface or ask the kinds of questions that would have brought me closer to understanding my subject.
So Why Even Try It?
What fascinated me most when I first started nature journaling was realizing how much birdwatchers already know instinctively. You hear a call for half a second, catch a movement in the corner of your eye, and somehow immediately know the species.
Sketching forces you to slow that instinct down and unpack it piece by piece. Instead of only asking, “What bird is this?”, you begin asking, “Why do I recognize it?”
Different birds reveal themselves through different features: color is often crucial in small songbirds, silhouette and wing shape in raptors, or bold black-and-white contrast patterns in distant waterfowl on a lake.
You start noticing proportions, posture, wing shape, movement, patterns, and all the small details your brain normally processes automatically.
Over time, this completely changes the way you observe the world. Your attention becomes more deliberate, and birds stop feeling like isolated sightings and begin feeling connected to the environment and to your own personal memories. Ordinary species become meaningful simply because of the hours you have spent studying them closely. In the process, you teach yourself how to approach birds with an open mind and heart, and that deeper understanding naturally becomes something you can share with others.
How Do I Start and How Do I Do It?
Let’s do an inventory check together:
Places – Smaller and Familiar Is Better
It might feel natural for a birdwatcher to want to go deep into untouched nature – places where there are no tourists, where shy birds are less disturbed.
But for practicing nature journaling, you instead want to go somewhere familiar, so that drawing does not compete with your desire to explore new, unknown, rare, or exciting species. You want some of the novelty to wear off a little.
It is also incredibly useful to keep returning to the same location over different days. This allows you to focus on observing how the birds change within the same space. On top of that, you end up building a rich collection of observations about your own neighborhood. For citizen science and local ecological awareness, that kind of repeated observation is incredibly valuable.
Tools – Portable and Versatile
There is no single correct answer to what tools you should bring with you, only recommendations depending on your experience level and preference. Every person has a different comfort level between drawing and painting. Some people are much more confident with a brush than with pencils.
If you have drawn before, you already have a sense of what a tool can do for you. If you haven’t picked up a pencil in years, first spend a little time becoming familiar with it again before heading outside. Grab the sketchbook you want to use outdoors – Can you comfortably hold it in one hand? Is it not too large or too heavy? Make lines. Test pressure. Test angles. See how thick or thin your lines can get.
Your 72-colour pencil set will probably not be useful here. You realistically only need five to seven basic colors that combine well together.
Most importantly, ask yourself: “Can I comfortably carry and use this outside?”
My Personal Essentials
As somebody much more comfortable with drawing due to its quick accessibility and simplicity, these are my personal essentials:
1) An A5-format sketchbook suitable for both pencil and watercolor (hot-pressed with smooth grain suitable for thin pencil linework)
2) A soft pencil and a sharpener (2B pencil softness allows both delicate lines and dark shading depending on the pressure)
3) Optionally, when I know I’ll stay longer, I bring water-soluble markers with a portable watercolor brush, or watercolour pencils. They are an absolute delight when trying to save the weight of carrying a full watercolor set, brushes, and water.
For sketchbooks, I strongly prefer stitched bindings that allow the pages to lie flat when opened. Being able to sketch across a full spread makes a huge difference when drawing habitats, panoramas, lakes, or open fields. Hand in hand with that, a hardcover is a must. You do not want to spend your energy handling a sketchbook that refuses to stay stable on your knees.
For windy days, a metal clip or clamp for keeping sheets together comes in handy, although it can slow you down when quick reactions and rapid page flipping are needed.
Step by Step
The Data
I usually begin a sketching session by writing down the date, weather, location, arrival time, and the species I notice immediately, often using tally marks to count them. I often start by sketching the habitat itself as well – especially if it is a vast area with no birds around me right away.
If I do not find a visible subject to draw throughout the session at all, the habitat itself is still worth examining. Notice the plants, paths in the grass, feeding areas, or places that birds often perch on. The longer you observe, the more questions begin to appear. Why are certain species present here but not elsewhere? Why do they prefer one area over another? One question always leads to another and unanswered questions simply become something to research later at home.
The Birds
If birds appear, it is normal to suddenly feel unsure about how to start. On top of that, birds move fast. Especially the small ones. Constantly. For that reason, you need to work fast as well.
You achieve that by simplifying your drawings.
Do not begin by outlining what you think is the correct bird shape. You will most likely make a wobbly line, lose confidence, want to erase and redraw it, waste time, and eventually realize the bird is already gone by the time you finish outlining the beak.
Begin from big to small. Start sketching generic body shapes: one oval for the body, one for the head, a line for the tail angle, maybe a curve for a stretched neck.
These are generic shapes – it could easily be any goose or swan species – they lay the groundwork for further sketching and shaping.
Now you begin building “species-specific shapes.” This is where you ask yourself: “What information must I include to make this bird identifiable?”
Species-Specific Shapes – What On Earth Is That?
A mallard duck has a different beak shape than a mute swan – each species has its own distinct form. If you begin consciously noticing the differences between those shapes, you will find it easier to draw them, especially if you apply draw-erase-redraw type of approach until you accidentally land on the right shape. Saying these observations out loud also helps.
Try asking yourself questions like: “If I draw an oval for the head and another for the body, do they touch, overlap, or sit far apart? How deeply does the beak extend into the skull? How high does the eye sit? Is the forehead above the beak rather sharply vertical, flat or smooth and round?”
A birdwatcher usually does not consciously think about these things, because they are not necessary for identifying a bird in the moment – your brain combines visual and audio information into one package and labels the species automatically. But a person who wants to draw the bird needs to consciously observe every individual feature. Noticing all of this while drawing at the same time is incredibly difficult.
Therefore, focus on one thing at a time:
Get your basic shapes down first. Ovals, circles, lines. Then focus only on the head shape – curvy, smooth, sharp? Then the beak – straight, curved, thick, thin?
If the bird flies away before you fully understand a pattern or shape, make a note beside the sketch and study it later at home. Nobody ever said you must finish everything entirely in the field. Go home. Compare your sketches with photographs, field guides, or videos. Add notes for clarification. Return to the same species another day and continue building knowledge on top of what you already observed.
Some people create highly scientific journals. Some create artistic sketchbooks. Some focus heavily on writing. Some barely write at all. There is no single correct method. Your journal should serve you, so find a way that suits your way of thinking.
Is Practicing At Home Allowed?
Yes! So please do. And I specifically recommend drawing from videos, not photographs. This is extremely important because photographs freeze one perfect moment, while videos show behavior, movement, rhythm, and character. A photo often invites you to create a hyperrealistic copy, while a video shows you how the bird exists in space – its essence.
There are many bird livestreams and recordings online with incredibly high image quality. Some are even filmed at such high frame rates that pausing still gives you very sharp images during flight.
So grab a stack of cheap printer paper and a pencil or pen, and play a video of your choice – try to watch the sequence a couple of times before beginning to draw. Try not to pause immediately, but instead use the replay feature to observe very closely. Every time you replay the video, you will notice something new.
A System We Are All a Part Of
What begins as a few uncertain lines gradually turns into a growing sense of connection. With each session, the landscape stops being a backdrop and becomes a living system you are part of. Birds are no longer fleeting subjects to identify, but individuals tied to place, weather, season, and memory. Even the smallest observations start to carry meaning because they are no longer isolated moments, but part of a continuous relationship with the environment.
Staying in touch with nature in this way is not just a practice of observation, but a way of maintaining awareness of the systems we are part of. The more time you spend noticing what lives around you, the harder it becomes to ignore how fragile and interconnected it all is. That awareness matters. It shapes how you move through the world, how you treat the places you return to, and what you choose to protect. If enough people keep paying attention in this way, even in small, quiet moments, it adds up to something larger – a more grounded, more responsible relationship with the environment we will all depend on, now and in the future. And by sharing this curiosity and passing on our appreciation for nature and its protection, we can inspire others to do the same.
So go out and enjoy our planet. May your attention stay sharp!
Till next time,
Maximiliana
Maximiliana Martiskova is an illustrator, author, and bird enthusiast based in Berlin. Please check out her workshops in nature journaling as well as her beautiful books and illustrations.