Today’s Joyful activity: go for a walk in nature, and take the time to notice 3 things. (This is a fairly good description of what the first half of my art practice has been for the past decade: take a walk, notice things, take pictures. I’ll include an example at the end of this post!).

Easy version:

You can take a picture with your phone if you’d like, or just capture it in your memory for a brief spell :)

Less easy:

Do a sketch of one or more of the things you noticed on your walk. You can do this from a photo, or from memory. It doesn’t need to be “good”, the point is to spend time considering this thing visually.

Why?

Connecting to nature is good for your mental health! And your physical health!

Ideas for sharing:

If you’re on social media, you can share a picture of the thing(s) you noticed, and/or your sketch if you did one. Add a quick description of the activity to encourage your friends and followers to try it too!

If you’re doing a “daily Joy texting” partnership with someone, send each other pictures or a description of the things you noticed and/or your sketch.

You can also share your nature walk in person. Point out the things you’re choosing to notice as you go.

Feel free to share your experience with me! Either in the comments below, or by emailing me.

My personal 3 things:

I noticed a lot of things on my meander in nature, but not all of them were photogenic. The three I picked to share in the image at the top of this page are:

delicate shadows on the snow
the incredible peacefulness of being tucked inside the lower branches of this evergreen tree
that a deer leaps the equivalent of about 6 of my strides when it’s running (!)

Now, back to how this relates to my personal art practice.. most of my artwork starts off as I walk that I take with my camera(s). Just curiously wandering, keeping my eyes and mind open. Here’s a layer-by-layer example of “When We Dreamt of Paradise”:

Day 3 - Nature Walk