Keeping a Journal

Ink sketch and watercolour

Journaling is the process of regularly writing your thoughts, your dreams, milestones, events and feelings down on paper and, these days, virtually on blogs. There are many different kinds of journals you can choose to keep but it is a powerful process that provides the opportunity to explore things in a measured way. It can also be fun to look back and discover how far you have come!

"A common symptom of modern life is that there's no time for thought, or for letting the impressions of the day sink in," says Thomas Moore. Setting aside a block of time, however brief, to freely express thoughts and feelings is psychically healthy.

Journals also affirm the value of our lives, preserve our memories and dreams, and help to pin-point emotional patterns. Writing about problems is a great way to work them out, and recording negative emotions is often akin to dropping them altogether.

Keeping a nature journal, for example, is a wonderful way to become spiritually centred. We are rewarded for the attention to detail and patience this practice requires with deepened understanding of what it means to be human and alive and a part of Creation. What you decide to put in your journal is a personal choice. Nature journals can be anything from field notes, which limit themselves to objective descriptions of what the writer has observed, to fully developed poems, stories, or essays in which the landscape is a major character.

You may want to draw or paint in your journal as well as write in it or to fill its pages with photographs or pressed flowers. Experience the natural world through fresh eyes! Keeping a nature journal is your most powerful ally in crafting the kind of life you want.

 One of my Nature Journals - here I used a Feint

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A written word lives forever

I’ve got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the feel and smell of books. 

- JOSEPH FIENNES 

Black Pilot Calligraphy Lettering Pen and wash in Moleskine 200gsm Sketch-book 

Sketching with my pen gives me great pleasure - very often a few lines and a mere doodle start taking shape and something appears that can be worked into something more substantial.

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No rain yet...

Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams. 

- Ashley Smith 

 Ink sketch and colour wash of a scene in Magaliesburg in my Moleskine Nature sketchbook

It's the first of October, heading for mid-summer here in South Africa and we've had no rain yet. Normally we have the winds in August clearing up old growth and our first spring rains early in September, but the wind has been blowing right through September, seemingly blowing the clouds back to whence they came from.

I'm having to water my garden every day, we've had some very high temperatures, but nothing seems to give life like even just a couple of millimetres of rain...

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A glint of Green

Yesterday the twig was brown and bare;
To-day the glint of green is there;
Tomorrow will be leaflets spare;
I know no thing so wondrous fair,
No miracle so strangely rare.
I wonder what will next be there!
~L.H. Bailey


A Glint of Green - Done with Fountain pen ink - Parker Quink Blue, Rohrer & Klinger "Verdura" green and Rohrer & Klinger "Vernambuk" red - on Ashrad 200gsm watercolour paper.

SPRING! is surfacing in South Africa (August 2010) and little bits of green are appearing everywhere! From tiny leaf buds to the greenest of grass stalks peeping through a black charred landscape, the world is turning greener by the day! Hooray!

Here I played with some Rohrer & Klinger and Parker fountain pen ink.