Forest nature diary - keeping a nature sketchbook

I had that big size sketchbook (A3 page size) on the shelf for quite some time and on January 29, 2009 I picked it up, because the idea for a forest diary had emerged.

I remember that late afternoon quite well,it was one of those typical grey days in January, still cold but not much snow. I was in a very low mood the financial crisis eventually had hit Europe too and I found myself involved. Looking back I find my state of mind reflected in this sketch. I did not touch the sketchbook for weeks again.

I had not been too happy with the start of this diary and had not used it in February at all. But as seasons change our minds are changing and after all I gave it another try. I wanted some colors, I was tired of the dull grey winter skies. So I took a couple of old gouache tubes with me only to find on site that some of them had gone stone hard (iron oxide pigments like black and ochre).

Thank God some of the colors were still ok, also I had a cheap Pelikan gouache set with me. There were patches of beautiful blues in the sky that evening and the sundown gave an almost violet tinge to the bare branches of beech trees. The green moss on old stumps seemed like a promise for spring and somehow things took off.

On that evening I knew that this diary would go on.

So it did not take long until my next excursion. This time I choose a place at a small pond. There was only little water in the pond and I could place my seat on the frozen ground. A group of young spruce trees and a poplar on the other side were the subjects of my study. I could see a grey heron flying from the top of the poplar tree, the ducks did not like me and started to quak, but gave up after some time.

I returned to same place at the beginning of April as I could not finish in one sitting. Then I walked uphill and settled down near an old dead trunk and started to make notes of the colors I saw. On the left page I painted little squares in the colors I saw, on the right page I made notes where I had seen those colors. It was great experience and liberating to concentrate on the colors without the painters pressure to do a representational picture.

A couple of days later I scanned the colour chart and tried to order the colours into a system of similar colors in series from light to dark.

I had noticed this big piece of a fallen tree trunk already on my way to the pine and beech forest and on a further afternoon I went back to do this study in grey and ochre colors. The flies were terrible, I had not missed them until then.

The emergence of the new leaves in spring is a feast of colors. The fresh green of young beech foliage is a highlight of the season. I had to do a color chart in May. These pages in the sketchbook are among my favorites because when you open those pages the shades of spring green flood you eyes. It is such a strong impression and I am happy that I dared to use this big size sketchbook for that purpose. All those photographs I had taken in past years just cannot match with this color chart pages.



Even though I live in a rural area it is hard to find a quiet place in our forests already. But there are some, until a horse and rider breaks through the thicket from the back !
At the very end of May the soft spring green had disappeared and made place for the typical strong summer green, many leaves are shiny on top from the thin wax layer that protects them against the heat of the summer sun. It was a cloudy and windy day on the 31st of May when I went out to find a quiet place. The wind was a problem and I had to put two big clams from the DIY market to keep the sketchbook pages open.

It was raining a bit on this Sunday morning when I went out to a place I had spotted on my way back from an earlier exercise. I took an umbrella with me, but did not need it all the time, because the leaves of the beech trees formed their own umbrella. This is called interception among foresters. About 20-30 % of the rain is "lost" over a year, before it touches the forest soil. We all have experienced that a light rain can be hold back by foliage completely.

It was no surprise to meet a beautiful salamander under this moist conditions. It remained without movement for a long time, but then as I had not watched it for five minutes it had disappeared into the nowhere.

Mid June I found a place with a big clearing, planted with young oak trees. A place I would visit a couple of times later. I did a color chart from the view over the forest glade. Starting with the colors of the sky, then some colors of the trunks of big tree left, follwed by greens of foliage and grass, shades of grey from the old asphalt road and finally a strong red of unripe elderberries and ochres from some wooden sticks.
On the right page there are notes about the recorded colors, each group is highlighted by a thin layer of the dominating hues blue,green and red ocre. Two colors are crossed, those were wrong mixtures,colors which do not occur in nature.

I liked the place with the clearing an came back a week later or so, but turned away from the clearcut to step into a mature oak and beach forest. This time I put a grid with grey gouache on left and right page.
There were twelve fields on each side, on the left page I filled the fields with small,quick color and tonality studies and on the right I added my notes about the sense of place in the corresponding field. I enjoyed this on three days and noticed that the change of daylight had been creeping into my gouache sketches. The first day,the 6 sketches in the top row, was with sunshine, the next row of three was with rather dull sky and on the last row the day was brighter again.

Below there is a selection of art cards that are based on the sketchbook forest diary. Each card contains two or even more images. The cards can be easily edited with the Zazzle design tool. Images can be resized, moved or removed. You can add text and additional own images to turn the card in a unique personal piece. Here is a link to the gallery of all forest diary cards on Zazzle

There are various combinations of images from the forest diary. If the combination that you would like is not there just contact me through the contact button at the top right of this page. Let me know which images you want to have on front, inside and back of the card.

Woody debris forest,
young beech tree grove
by editionha

Forest winter
season greetings
by editionhap>

art card
Forest diary
by editionha

There is an old ammunition depot area which I visited after long time. It is funny how uncertain one can feel when you enter an area that has been unaccessable for years. Orientation seems difficult and one needs to learn how it all fits to the familiar suroundings. On this day the study was about the look at the forest from outside and the sky above.

I always loved the color of old beech trunks, the many shades of grey, the interesting wounds , the colours of the moss aprons at the base of the trunk and the lichen growing on the bark. This one has damaged roots , probably from transporting of logs too. I learned a lot about transparent layers of gouache colors.

On this Sunday morning I choose a sunny place under a big beech tree at the boarder of my favorite clear cut. Coarse woody debris, pieces of bleached old trunks, and branches lie around here like bones. I always liked the many shades of grey on these. They are anything but dead, many organisms make a living in and on coarse woody debris and I took my time to watch it. I was so immersed in my studies that I did not notice the roebuck that had come near buy less than 100 yards.
My attempt to do nature prints of leaves with guache were not completely in vain,but difficult, as the surface of the leaves is covered with a water repellent wax layer.



Later I spent another afternoon to do a further study from my favorite place near a young plantation of oak trees. Some old trunks were left to support the wildlife especially our woodpeckers woodpeckers.

At the end of July I returned again and studied a big piece of an old trunk lying at my feet. I love the smell dry wood and resin in the summer heat

Near my favorite place there is an old spruce tree, probably some 30 meters tall. I spent three days days to draw the tree top and then the full tree with ink and feather.



Sometimes I have clear plans or a quite exact idea before I go out to sketch, but sometimes there is no plan and things emerge on site. On a day in August I had no idea what I would do and where to take place. Spontaneously I chose a new site in an oak forest, while listening to the sounds and making notes the sun came through and there was this shadow on the forest soil....I returned to that place on a subsequent day to complete the ink line drawings of twigs, leaves and beech fruits lying on the soil.

Summer comes to an end, there already brownish and reddish tints in the color of leaves. Also it has been too dry this year and this contributes to the early change of colors too. I hear an unfamiliar bird call from the big spruce in my back. Later I learn that it was a common raven. A dead mouse on the way home is quickly sketched in pencil. It always touches me to see such a small animal having lost its life.

Today I had set out without a definite plan or idea. It is the first day with a real feeling of autumn. Around 9:00 am the sun is still low and raises cold white light on the leaves and between the tree trunks.

I feel the typical cool autumn air on my face and above the cobalt blue sky swept clean by the wind. I settle down in a young mixed oak grove. It takes some time until the birds, chickadees and nuthatches, get accustomed with my presence and calm down. Until then they scold on the intruder. Finally, the view over the bumpy machine path, which I am following along, and the mosaic of light and shadow become the object of my study. Good squinted is half drawn is the motto for today. In the end the ink drawing reminds me of those fairytale shadow plays I loved as a child.

There was sunny weather today in the meadows near the small village Zaisersweiher. Near one of the numerous paddocks I did this sketch (ink and gouache) of a forest border. After the big,nloisy lawn mower had done his service, there was only the faint apple-munching of the horses to hear.

On my trips during this week, I had a small mirror with me to get a relaxed look up and through the tree tops of a grove of ash. This airy entry in my forest will be well remembered for numerous mosquitoes bites. I was surprised by the incredible number of large and small spiders, which all had their nets stretched. Fall is in the air, you can smell it already and dusk sets in earlier and earlier.

Young bird watcher t shirt by editionha
Sell art online at Zazzle.

Our hardwood forest in autumn are hard to describe. It is a feast in colors. In big splashes of thinned gouache I try to capture the impression of the transition from green to yellow and ocre. Temperatures dropped very quickly this year below 10° Celsius during the day. Two weeks later I return two more times to the same place for the ink drawing of tree trunks and branches. A pair of big black woodpeckers at the base of a big old oak trunk is surprised to see me early in the morning and flies away quickly. Still the sound of falling oak seeds can be heard. Close by some wild pigs have burrowed the soil.

A perfect day with around 12-13 °Celsius and sunshine,eytraodinary weather for the month of November. The forest this morning is a feast in colours. The colours of the fallen leaves are the most difficult ones to my surprise. There are so many shades by fresh fallen leaves on top of those from the previous year, beams of sunlight and cool shades make for a beautiful carpet. The light shades of yellow and ocre glow in sunlight. I am happy to have my camera with me, while the guache dries slowly I try to capture some of the beauty. (webalbum)



Autumn has made quick progress in one week from November 8. to November 15., on both days I went out to same remote place in a mixed oak and beech forest. The leaves have turned to colors from glowing, bright ocre to a red brown. November still has not decided to become a real winter month this year. As I draw the ink line on the 15th the temperature is at around 15° Celsius. Most of our birds have taken their way to warmer part of South Europe and farther, but those who stay are very busy this morning. It has been raining quite a bit during the week and the air is still moist, mushrooms are growing fast. While the gouache colors dry I take a little film with my phone camera over coarse woody debris.



End of November it is still very warm with 14-15° Celsius. As I walk through the woods I can feel waves of warm air on my face. I take place in a young spruce tree grove, where wild pigs have left their traces.The hunting tenant checks me out, wants to know what I am doing here. It starts to rain and I know that I won´t finish the ink sketch today.

A week later under bright, grey November sky things look different. Leaves of beech have almost fallen entirely to the ground, now dry,brown and wrinkled. Nearby workers have felled trees and some of the spruce trees are marked as well. The forest is very still today, only a few birds and the last dry leaves falling down with a sound of a little water spring. Somehow the shadowless, soft November light gets into my sketch with thinned gouache colors and happily I take it home.

The circle of the year closes. Going out in frost and snow is very special. The bare trees allow a much more distant view and a completely different feeling of space while walking emerges. Sounds are muted by the snow and often there is this shadowless bright light under a grey sky.
The place I have chosen is often visited by a group of venisons, I can hear the sound of woodpeckers, smaller ones and our biggest, the black woodpecker, knocking in a sonor staccato. On the second visit it is so cold that the ink freezes in the small vessel in my hand after a few minutes.
In total I revisit the place six times between end of December and the first week of the new year. These imperfect notes will always remind me and take me back to this place, the winter season 2009 and the mood of optimism at the turn of the new year 2010.

We have a lot of snow this year and it is coming and going. As a result I have a two sketches one started in snow yet unfinished and another started without snow also unfinished. The sessions in snow have been great. The soft shadowless sky light reflected by the snow and the silence were really meditative. Only the woodpeckers were busy preparing for spring.

At low temperatures the gouache colors dry very slowly.Thus I am forced to explore wet in wet painiting techniques. The gouache surprises me with beautiful color washes and transition.

There are minus 4 ° Celsius this morning when I take off to the forest and back towards the same place.

As I arrive on site it is much warmer, it catches on to snow and rain, the temperature rises to zero degrees or above. I decide for the best strategy, in fact the only possible one, by simply writing down ruthlessly what I see in front of me.

The black branches and brambles that stick out from the thin, partially frozen layer of snow. In the background the maze of gray and black trunks and branches. Sometimes sun rays beam through the branches, long shadows stretch over the bumpy grayish-white snow. Bright drops of water hanging on the thin twigs of beech. Very close a woodpecker hammers again.

Finally, I am threshing milky broth mixed of water and opaque white guache over the page: Now I'm done with you, bloody snow!

This study painted in gouache is located very near the previous one. The snow was gone at the end of February for a few days, so I was forced to begin a new page without knowing whether the study of snow could be finished at all . Before the snow came back I was a third time out there. You could still take the study much further, but I like the unfinished, the state that still contains many options better.

roe deer love to eat the buds and fresh leaves on the twigs that grown on young stumps of beech trees. Over time bushes with a kind of bonsai look develop that way, an indicatopr that a lot of game is around. I visted this stump three times in March and April 2010. After 30 minutes the hands get too cold and the ink starts to get too thick to draw at low temperatures.

I had taken a long break from the forest diary with doing ink drawings of fruit tree orchards during the warm season.
Now at the beginning of winter I get back into the woods. A fallen tree trunk covered with moss is the subject during a couple of painting sessions. Finally the snow comes.

The snow is 30-40 cm high now and it is difficult to walk. Thanks to the new sports thermo cloths walking and sketching under these conditions is still a pleasure. I have cut a big piece of plastic foil that I place under the sketchbook to protect it against the snow.
Before starting to sketch I need to step down the snow with my boots. I try to capture the beautiful grey and greens I see on the beech tree trunks in front of me.

recently I added a series of forest diary envelopes and collection of forest stamps to my zazzle shop.

Deciduous Summer
Forest envelope

Woody debris
Summer Forest envelope

Deciduous Summer
Forest envelope

A big beech tree trunk with the typical mosses at the base of trunk had caught my attention. On the second session I found that part of my composition had been removed by foresters. No problem with opaque gouache colors! This is not the first time I had to change parts of a picture.

The frost and snow came back again. The little pond nearby was frozen with ice and a snow cover had settled on top.

A windy, fairly "warm" day for February. Nevertheless I preferred a seat in the sun on a forest clearing. Young oak trees need protection against roe deer with plastic tubes in this region. I began to document the making of these gouache sketches with my phone camera taking snapsshots of the main changes. Read how this forest sketch was done and learn moe about my sketching gear.

Wet and grey are the right words for the weather conditions that prevailed while I was sketching this hunting perch ready to be moved to final destination I guess. There was a real workshop with cut timber and boards at this place.

Sketching in rain is interesting and ok for me as long as the rain does not get too heavy. I was lucky to find this place in a spruce tree grove as not much of the rain came through the tree tops. In the end things got quite wet though. The rain drops created beautiful patterns and soft color transitions which were unfortunately partly lost as I had to close the book for walking home.

I had been near this ash tree grove to sketch the sky in autumn 2009 and remebered the agressive flies in this moist forest very well. No flies yet in March. Rain had filled the small creek with water that was running with a constant, calming sound. Drizzling rain forced me to paint wet in wet, impossible to get lost in details. The ochre color of the ash trunks, the pale grass from the previous year and the brown and partly reddish clay soil turned this sketch into a study of earth colors. This time I was clever and protected the sketch with a fleece cleaing towel before closing the book. That way most of the wet paint was not damaged.

Another rainy day forced me to seek shelter on the porch of a hunting lodge. The buds of beech trees were still closed, but spring is announced by the very busy woodpeckers.

Coarse woody debris is a fascinating subjetc. I found this tree stump among many others very close to our home. While the first layers of gouache color dried on the left page I did a quick in sketch of the same stump on the right. In second session on Aprils fool day I finished both. The pimroses are pushing, spring is near.

I had started this sketch in an old beech and oak forest in the last days of March and finished in April. The first greens, green grass and opening buds in the undergrowth, are visible now.

Spring has sprung. The sloes have started to bloom, white and pink blossom colors on some cherry trees and the first green in shrubs are out. The forest, namely the oak trees are still in brown colors though.

The wonder of spring is surprising every year. For about 10 days the fresh greens of young beech leaves create a special atmosphere in our woods. The days from mid until end of April are the most exciting ones in our European forests. Most of the birds are back from their summer roosts in Northern Africa and fill the air with their songs.

After the overwhelming flood of green foliage I had the desire for a change. There are not many softwood forest around. This is a young spruce tree grove in sunlight. I loved the graphic effects of light and shadow.

Meantime the foliage of beech and oak trees has unfolded up to the very top of every tree. The forest have changed from their transparent grey and brown atmosphere to more or less dense pattern of light absorbing layers of leaves. Only a few percent of the full daylight get through the canopy down to the soil.

In the months of June and July the greens turn into a more or less uniform saturated dull green. there seems to be only one colour almost like in winter. I was in the mood for an ink study to explore the many shades and tonalities. A doe with a very young fawn came by and entertained me.

The woodpeckers were very busy to feed their chicks which were making a hell of a noise. So I moved for another 100 yards to spend my time with this view of a path through the woods.

A piece of sky in a lovely shade of light blue made me stop in the beech forest. I took a number of pictures while the gouache colour was drying and thus documented the making of this sketch.

I placed my seat on a sunny path through the fields on this afternoon to paint the forest edge again. The corn still looks blueish. The clouds changed and moved in an impressive way all the time and as the evening approached the shadows got longer and longer.

I have visited this pond many times and did three sketches meantime. The place is mentioned by Hermann Hesse in his short story named "Erwin". It still looks pretty much the same. The cistercian monks breeded fish here already in the 12/13th century. For that reason probably a beautiful King fisher suddenly flew by and surrounded the reeds.

We had a couple of cool,grey and rainy days. I was lucke that I could finsish this sketch of a clearing with an old oak tree just before the rain started.

The colours of our beech and oak forests are shades of green and brown ocre with some grey from the beech tree trunks. In light the foliage gets "hot spots" of warm yellow green, whereas in shade the greens are sometimes almost metallic cool greyish green.

I was observed and barked at by a young roe deer when I sketched this old tree stump in front of a young beech tree grove. Obviously I was not welcome around in the middle of the mating season.

The month of July is cold and rainy this year. Nevertheless I need no umbrella under the canopy of beech foliage. Only a few raindrops make their way down through the branches onto my sketchbook on the forest ground. I sketch the grid of the trunks and some bigger pieces of woody debris neglecting all leaves.

The forest ground is a cosmos of its own. It changes with the seasons and people who understand a little about flora can read it like an open book. Moss, grass,flowers, the old foliage tell what the soil is all about, dry or moist, alkalic or acidic...well developed or thin on rocks and stone.

The flies were almost eating me even though the creek had fallen dry. I did this sketch in two sessions, hoping that I could sketch some water on the second occasion, but it was gone again. There is so little light getting through the dense canopy of young oaks and beech trees. On overcast and humid days the green are even more intense. The mushrooms are already growing( Read the blog post).

Summer has peaked at around the 20th of August, the forest is a green jungle now. A couple of hot days with more than 30°Celsius cannot disguise the fact that autumn is near. There is the sound of falling acorns and the glistening cobwebs in the evening sun.




I spent two sessions at the edge of the forest hill. The soil is dry here and trees do not grow that high. The wind was howling in the tree tops on the first session already. Then the thunderstorm and hail came at night. On return I saw lots of acorns, twigs and branches and green leaves torn down.

As autumn comes nearer and the final pages in my sketchbook get filled I feel the urge to re-visit some places I have been in the two years before. I go back to that forest clearing where I heard the raven call to sketch again the woody debris and the trunks of those old beech trees with their beautiful grey bark.



Shadows already get long and move quickly on these September afternoons. This sketch is done in a rush without background preparation trying to capture the play of light and shadow staged by a low September evening sun.

This is the last sketch in this nature diary, the final pages are filled. In total there are now 59 double page sketches in this book. Looking back the book has become a power house, a battery of life energy with a strong presence. The time and effort spent over three years, the memories of many encounters with nature and wildlife that are connected with it, the number of sketches and their value as document and expression of a short span in my life turn this sketchbook into a valuable object.

Going out once or twice a week for some hours to observe nature is a great experience. Living with and experiencing the seasonal changes is something I do not want to miss anymore. This was natural when I was a child that played in the woods almost daily. Slowing down and to escape from the daily load of busy work is another benefit of keeping a nature diary.