Susan Leigh Tomlinson

"Why is it so important that I draw?” I asked after looking through the table of contents of How to Keep a Naturalist’s Notebook and realizing that author Susan Leigh Tomlinson devotes about one half of the pages to teaching drawing.

Initially browsing and skimming this attractive book, I liked very much what I read. For example, while Tomlinson downplays the importance of gear, the advice she does offer is good: "Cheap binoculars are better than none at all." I was also happy to notice that she includes a copy of the Beaufort scale, which is used to quantify wind speed by observing movement of leaves and branches.

Although I've spent as much time as possible in outdoor activities -- fishing, camping, kayaking, hiking, gardening -- my previous attempts at keeping journals and notebooks had yielded mixed results, and this book seemed a promising aid to jump-starting new efforts. But still the question remained: "Why is it important that I draw?"

Tomlinson answers the question to my satisfaction by asserting that the act of sketching plants and animals forces us to slow down and study details, to really see as opposed to looking. This sounded good because my natural inclination is to see the outdoors with wide-angle eyes. Wide angle is fine, but I would benefit by shifting more often to telephoto to direct my attention to one detail, or to macro to view the detail up close. In gardening, my tendency translates to favoring overall design as opposed to appreciating the detail of a single plant.

The author is a professor at Texas Tech University and like any good teacher, she has learned from her students. From her experience teaching drawing skills to enhance students' abilities to focus on details in nature, she has noticed common obstacles. Students often have problems drawing wild flowers, for example, because flowers “are so familiar to us that we forget to look at them. Most people have in their heads a symbol of a flower (most often it is a daisy) and when they sit down to draw they have a tough time drawing anything but that."

OK then, now she has sold me on the desirability of slowing down to study details and on drawing as a method to achieve this, but what if I have little or no talent? Tomlinson says she hears this all the time from students and confidently responds that she can teach anyone to sketch a reasonable facsimile of what they see. The book presents a series of simple exercises towards this end. I picture her rapping a ruler on a desk while scolding students on the importance of practicing these exercises. So here I am, a man who hasn't drawn since elementary school, half a century ago, and even then I wasn't very good (except P-38 fighter planes and 1957 Chevrolets). Here I am practicing drawing circles, triangles, and other shapes according to the book's directions.

Drawing exercises aside, How to Keep a Naturalist’s Notebook has much to say about relating to our natural environment. Tomlinson argues that it’s important to learn the names of plants and animals and illustrates this by making a comparison to our social relationships with other humans. She notes that "something is missing from our relationships if we don't know each other’s names. When a nameless person has baked me cookies, she's just an acquaintance, albeit a nice one. But when the cookie lady is Nancy, the relationship becomes one of friendship." She believes that it is beneficial to learn both the common and the scientific names for plants and animals and offers suggestions for correctly pronouncing the latter.

Getting in touch with our natural surroundings involves using senses other than vision. Tomlinson’s emphasis on drawing is understandable since we can sketch what we see. On the other hand, what we hear, smell, and touch while outdoors cannot be as easily recorded directly in a journal. The author helpfully provides guidance in using words to describe what we hear, smell, and feel without using clichés.

I very much liked How to Keep a Naturalist’s Notebook and feel I have benefited from reading it. Now I’ll have to move beyond drawing circles and triangles to attempting birds and squirrels.… (altro)