 Take it away, Kim. OK, thank you. Thank you, Angela, for inviting me to speak today and to the Miller Collections Room of the Village King Library for hosting this Zoom session. And to everyone who's here for tuning in and to learn more and maybe be inspired to take up journaling practice. Angela gave in the introduction a little bit about me, that I'm a naturalist, a photographer, and an artist. And as a naturalist, having taken some classes, what I do, some of the activities I participate in are wildlife surveys. For about five years until the last year before COVID, I was doing butterfly surveys and night insect surveys with the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, going out and counting the butterflies and recording the butterflies and also the flowering plants to help them in their restoration efforts. I also did some surveys with the Lorquin Entomological Society. We got invited to Tahoe Ranch to do some surveys and to document the insects that they have on the ranch also. That was a great time. We did that for about four or five years. I also did an insect survey at the El Dorado Nature Center. And I do bird surveys. I'm still doing those with sea and sage autobahn at our local Los Cerritos wetlands. I'm also a photographer, mostly a nature photographer. And this is where I probably spend the largest portion of my time, going out on walks and photographing whatever nature I see, trying to capture some of the interesting behaviors of our local flora and fauna. I use these in some citizen science projects, such on iNaturalist and eBird and documenting what I see. As an artist, I do some artwork. I've taken some botanical illustration classes. I've taken some other mixed media workshops and some journaling workshops, too, some excellent workshops. And I enjoy a lot of color in my artwork, usually with a nature theme, but also of my own muse at home, my kitty cats. And I'm also a journaler. I create journals. Journaling is a nice supplement to doing photography and also as a naturalist. It causes me to look a little bit more closely. And that's what I'm going to talk about today is how you can do some journaling, too, which is writing in your journal. So what is nature journaling? It's I hope to inspire you today and give you some tools and things that you can take up a practice of nature journaling on your own. I've called it nature journaling. It's not about the journal. It's about the process of journaling, the verb, to take in nature, take what you see, smell, hear, and feel about nature, processing it and thinking about it, and then writing it down on paper. And it's that whole complete cycle that completes the process of nature journaling. Putting it on paper really is part of the key. So often you see something and you say, oh, I will remember that. It's the physical writing it down that actually causes you to remember it. More so than just seeing it and thinking you're going to remember. Not even if you look back at the page, but just having gone through that mechanical process. Scientific illustration is something that has been used for a very long time and is still used. It's accurately representing something in nature. But that's not journaling. That's a process that can be used in your journals, but you don't have to be a scientific illustrator in order to be a nature journaler. Themes of nature have been used in art, and I particularly use Asian art examples here, because the Miller Room I know has an extensive Asian art collection. But art is not journaling. There are artist journals, but for nature journaling, you can use artwork in your journal, but that alone is not journaling. Poetry and prose have been inspired by nature. I include one poet here, Agda Nash, who I've always liked since I was a child who wrote silly little poems. One of them is Behold the Pelican. His beak can hold more than his belly can. And he had a number of those. And you can use prose and poetry in your journals. Naturalist journals have been used for a very long time. Before we had our electronics, before we had the cell phone that we can take pictures with or a camera, people used journals. And they wrote down all kinds of observations about weather, time of day, locations. In the field, they would talk about the roots that they covered, the vegetation. This is a page from a one page from Charles Darwin's journal. And you can see it has a little bit of illustration and a lot of writing on it. And I can't make it out. But he used this for himself. And that's what the journals were, for capturing information while you were in the field. Now, I'm not going to make you all into this kind of naturalist journal from the old times. But you can see that it's a very simple thing, and it's a tool that people use for themselves. So what is, how do we start? How do you start journaling? Well, it's very simple. And anyone can do it. You start with pencil and paper. I am guessing that most of you have access to a pencil and paper. The next thing you do is you find what interests you. And there are so many things that interest people. But what it interests you is a very personal thing. I do enjoy insects, and I'm interested in insects. But you might be interested in flowers. You might be interested in weather or geology. Whatever it is that interests you, that's what you find. And then you start simple. You observe it closely, whatever it is you're looking at. And you say things to yourself like, I notice. I wonder. It reminds me of. And by doing that, you really get starting to look at something more closely. And your journal doesn't have to be pretty. And there is no right or wrong way to journal. You can take a number of journaling classes, and people will tell you, this is how you have to do a journal. And if you're taking a science class, maybe they'll tell you, you have to keep a journal. And it has to look a certain way. But when you're doing this for yourself, there's no right. There's no wrong. It doesn't have to be pretty. And there are other things like reporting the habitat, number of plants you see. You can write descriptions. You can draw information. You stick figures and words attached to them. All kinds of things that you can put in your journal. But the idea is to observe closely, ask questions, wonder, and connect to nature, and connect with past experiences. So if we look at this bird that I saw that was sitting on my birdbath out back, and you say, I notice, it reminds me of, I wonder. If I did a journal page, it might look like this, that it has a, I might observe of what I notice. I notice that it has a long tail, a grayback. I might draw an illustration, a stick figure. And that stick figure conveys some information about that bird. It gives the posture that that bird is sitting at. And it gives the relative length of the tail to the head and the body. And then I may wonder, the bird was on the fountain. Is it thirsty? I didn't have any water in there. Was it looking for bugs? It made a squawking noise. And then I may write in my journal, it reminds me of one I saw on the East Coast when I was visiting my grandmother. And that's a journal page, as simple as that. I always like this quote by Albert Einstein, which says, look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better. And by looking deeply, that's what really does it. It's taking you out of your day to day and looking and connecting. But remember, it's the process. And you can do it with any level of skill. You can do it alone. You can do it with others. And skill follows. So we're going to do a journal page right now. And you all are going to help me. We're sitting in the park and we see a squirrel. And many of you have probably seen squirrels before. I put down the date, today's date. We're going to say that we're in Sherpa Park over here. And I put down the weather that it's sunny and that it's warm. Now I'm going to ask you to open up a chat session. If you know how to open up a chat session and type into the chat something that you notice. Look deeply at the squirrel and anything else in the picture. And type into the chat something that you notice. OK, everyone. So go ahead and click on the chat button at the bottom of your screen if you'd like to participate and just enter any comments that you have about the photo. What do you notice? And then, Kim, you just let me know when you're ready. Well, when you see some answers coming in, do you want to pick a few? OK. So Matt is saying, well, he's wondering what it's holding. OK, he's wondering what it's holding. So I'll put that under, I wonder. What is it holding? OK. And then we have Monica. I notice it seems to be eating something. Notice it is eating something. And we have Tracy commenting, its tail is like a mohawk from the tailbone to the base of its skull in this picture, in this posthumous. Tail is like a mohawk. I can put it here or I could put it under. It reminds me of mohawk. I'm not going to write out the full thing, but OK. Shelly says, she notices a squirrel with a seed pod. And the arch of the squirrel's tail is in line with the shape of the seed pod. I think that kind of curves like the seed pod and along with its back. Interesting in the, all those shapes are kind of co-aligning with one another. OK. And now put in what you're wondering. And when you have some, you can read the manjula. OK. We're still getting our wondering coming in. OK. Dulce also mentioned that the squirrel's tail had the same shape as the seed pod. Linda wonders why its tail curves up against its body. Betty says, I wonder how it holds without a thumb. The squirrel has a thumb digit or not, I guess. Let's see, Laura. Did I just hear you say you wonder if it has a thumb? Yes, I'm wondering. Yeah, one question leads to another. And Laura says, I wonder if that is typical food for the squirrel. And Tracy wonders if the weather is cool. Maybe because of how its tail is fluffing up like that. That's difficult. And Karen is wondering, what time of day is it? It looks like the sun is on the squirrel. Oh, OK. Is the tail a response to cold, I think you said, and what time of day it looks like the sun? It's great. This starts bringing up so many different questions. And that's the idea is to start being curious. Let's have a few things that it reminds you of. And Tracy thought in the chat, Tracy said, it reminds me of sitting with her coffee, her own tasty little treat. Shelly, it reminds me of a park I played in as a child. Matt says it reminds him of eating bananas as a kid. The shape of that seed pod is certainly like a banana. Oh, Dulce, it reminds me of fall. OK, so that gives you an idea of some of the things that come to mind. And when you hear other people, you start asking questions too. And you interact with each other and just by writing it down. So this might be what my journal page looks like. You've all helped me with the journal page here. Now, you notice that I probably have some misspellings. And that's OK. It's OK because you can still read it and you can still understand it. It doesn't have to be perfect. And let me do here. OK, so now I just went ahead and did a very crude illustration of that squirrel. So if you went back and looked at that page, you might remember that moment of looking at that squirrel. And you might remember some of these questions. You might even go home and look up some of these questions and find more answers and more questions. So we have created together our first journal page. Yeah, I'm going for you. So where and when do you journal? I always try to put at least the weather, the time, the date, and the location on my journal. So that's what I have that little symbol. I've made up that little symbol that I put on my journal pages often that captures all of that information. But you can do it in any way you want. We are not. You can journal on trips. You can really journal anywhere and anytime. You can spend a lot of time and do beautiful illustrations, write a lot of prose. Or you can just take a couple of minutes to sit down and do it. This is a trip I took out to Cebola, which is a national wildlife preserve on the border of California and Arizona. And one of the things I wrote in there is the sounds of birds are everywhere. And then I listed some of the birds. And I said, where did they go at night and at the day? Because in this area, they all fly in in large masses and then all fly out. And so the best time to go is in the morning and the evening. And I was sitting there in the, and this was at night. And I remember that now because I look at my clock there and it tells me that it was at night. And it was 68 degrees and a little bit cloudy that day. But I was captured, I was taken by the sounds. And as I reread it right now, I'm remembering some of those sounds. You can also go to some of your local open spaces. This is gold. And I wrote here, golden hills of dried grass, sage scrub, oaks and sycamores. Ravens were harassing a turkey vulture. I hear quail, acorn woodpeckers, rentets, spotted toys, gray skies keep it cool. And here I did an illustration of a particular plant, datura, and also really was struck by the golden hill. So that's what I was trying to capture. And that's Irvine Regional Park. And I know that because I wrote it down on the page. On these pages one, the one on the left is from Dongrove Park, one of our local parks. And I was looking at the leaf damage on a eucalyptus tree. And I noticed a beetle, a eucalyptus beetle. And so that's what I was capturing there. And the other thought I have, that was in Orange County. And I had some oak leaves there. And I wrote that they were country and dry and brown. And I wrote, I noticed little brown spots. I wonder what causes them. Are they like my freckles? This is another place that was beautiful. And I was noticing the sycamore tree. I love sycamores. They're just beautiful. And I wrote, I love the way the sun lights up the leaves on the tree. They look yellow with orange-brown patches. They look more green in the shade. The leaves go brown from the tips inward. And Huntington Central Park. I was noticing the Canada geese. And I wrote, one stands guard while the others eat. They spread out, but come running when a plastic bag is rustled. Is a granola bar more interesting than the grass? Saying, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. But you don't have to go as far as an open space. This was in my own yard. I have a little bird bath there. And I also have weeds that grow in my grass. And so I went down and I wrote about the weeds that I saw in my grass. And I actually looked some of them up to find out what they were. And on the other side, I just noticed all the birds that were coming in. And one comment at 11 o'clock I wrote, a house wren joined the party. And I noticed how different I feel when working in my journal. It pulls me into a different part of my brain. One that leaves room for peace and happiness. Here, I had some buckwheat in my yard. And I started to draw the buckwheat. And I was noticing in detail how the leaves spied around the plant. And that's on the left from my journal. But then I was so interested in it, I decided to turn that into a separate piece of artwork. So I used my journal to really study the plant. But then I went and did a colored pencil illustration of it separately, which took a lot more time. This past Christmas in my house, you can always use books or photos to do illustrations or observations from. But I prefer to work on something live. A friend of mine gave me an amaryllis bulb for Christmas. And so before I planted it into the pot, I decided to study it and look at it. And so in my journal, I did an illustration. One nice thing about doing something at home at a desk is, A, you're a little bit more comfortable. And you have a lot more tools that you can play with. So here I was playing with a whole set of colored pencils. But when I was looking at the amaryllis, I turned it from side to side to look at it. And I was noticing all the dead parts on it. And I noticed how much it looked like an onion. And I don't know that I ever thought about that before when getting an amaryllis. I always think, oh, this is going to be great with those big, beautiful red flowers. But I don't think of the bulb and think of it as an onion. And so it got me wondering. And so then I looked around and I found something about it and found out that it is in the onion family. OK, when preparing for this, I was speaking to Angela. And she was talking that there are some people who do not have a yard. And I'm very fortunate that I have a yard or may not have access to open spaces. So after that, I did a 15 minute exercise. I went around inside my house and spent time looking for what could I find nature inside my own house. And so I had a tiny spider in the corner. And I said, what does it find to eat here? And then I looked at patterns of the wood on the furniture and on the floor. And I was looking at them and asking, what is the significance of the patterns? How and why did the tree grow that way? I found dust. I have a lot of that in my house. And notice that it gets thicker in some places. And I was thinking about how the air current moves around the house. Sometimes you can see it in the air when the light is shining through it. I had a bouquet of tulips that I had in the house. And so I looked at that. And I was looking at the colors and studied that carefully. I had my lazy cat sleeping. And it turned only one ear to listen to me. The kitchen has got tons of stuff from nature that you can look at. And I found an avocado. And I wondered, why does it have fluffy skin? How does it ripen when it's off the tree? How does that work? And of course, there's always a lot of people have wine. I don't drink, but my husband occasionally has a glass. And so even looking at a glass of wine, I started having curiosity and thinking about, how does fermentation process work? So there's all kinds of things that you can find if you have curiosity. OK, so I've talked a little bit about the journal and what you might put in the journal. And you can see some of my journals have illustrations in them because I do like color and I do like a little bit of artwork. But you have to start with paper. You can start with a plain sheet of paper. I have a plain sheet of paper in front of me. You can just pick up any sheet of paper in any pencil and do it. But if you want to get a little fan here, you can create a journal. And journals come in all different sizes and they come with different types of paper. And they all work. Just you work on them a little bit differently. The one I have a very small pocket one, which I like to carry because if you don't have it with you, you won't use it. And so having a small one that you can carry is easy. Sometimes I like a larger size. You can get lined ones. You can get some that have watercolor paper or mixed media paper. I find that the best, one of those. But they can be spiral bound. You can see the one on the bottom is a spiral one. They can lay flat. There's a whole bunch of different ones. And here I divided them up in sections. You can use one journal for everything. I have a number of separate nature journals in the field. But I decided to create a separate one for studying that I use when I'm at home. And I'm trying to study something in my house. So I may be using pictures or something else and not working in the field. And so I'll use that one. Oops, sorry. And you can see that they have different characteristics. Some of them open up that, if it has a spiral, it's nice because you can put the pages behind each other. But if it opens up like a book, then you can do an illustration across two pages. And then on the bottom right here, I have just a large notebook. And I just used pen and ink and a marker that I had sitting next to me to try to capture a bird. So you have a whole bunch of choices. And if you're like me, you can have an additional hobby of just collecting art supplies and a hobby of mine. And then there are the writing implements. And for the journals and also for all of these implements, I've actually been copying them into the text at the end of this presentation so that you can have copies of those. Some of these tools that I have, there are all kinds of pens you can use. The ones on the left are brush pens and they have a water soluble ink in them. And I'll give you some examples of that. I have micron pens, you add a pen-tell pen. These pens are pigment liners. They don't, you can put water over them and they don't move. And I'll give you an example of that. You can use pens. Sorry, interrupt. We're just having a little trouble. We have some patrons who are saying that your voice, your audio isn't very clear. So I don't know if maybe sitting a little closer. I don't know if it makes any difference, but your audio is going in and out a little bit. Oh, maybe that's it. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Oh, you sound good now. Maybe it was getting covered up. Okay. Okay. I will try to do, thank you for that feedback. The pencils also, you can use a pencil with an eraser on it, but if you're in the field, you don't want to have to sharpen it. So using a mechanical pencil is good for in the field because you just press on it to get more lead. To the right of that, I have some brushes that are water brushes. The blue plastic contains water inside. So you just squeeze it to pump water onto your brush and you can use that for art supplies. And then you have a white pigment pen and a ballpoint pen and countless other tools that you can use. So ink, I talked about two kinds of ink. The one on the left, you put it down, you could put water on top of it and it will not move. Whatever line you draw stays there. The one on the right, I drew lines and then I used that water brush to push around the ink so that you can use that to actually create shading. It's just a different technique. But I like to add color. On the right, I've got some colored pencils that I can use if I'm in the field or at home I can use colored pencils. You can use crayons, markers, pencil. On the left, you can see I made myself a little watercolor kit. And what that is is I bought those little separate pans. You can get those at an art supply store and I put ink watercolor from tubes into them. And the can is actually an Altoids tin that I glued onto a watch strap and then I have a half-cut sock around my arm to wipe my brush on. And there's my Altoid watercolor kit that I made in my dirty watercolor sock. And you can get little pans of watercolors and you can use colored pencils. There are actually watercolor colored pencils so you can draw with them and then use that water brush to move around the color on your page or you can use tubes like I did there. Since you have to have water with watercolor, that's why those little brushes are great because then you don't have to carry a lot of water into the field. So here are examples where I've used a pigment liner pan where I've drawn an illustration in ink and then I filled in some watercolor and I like that technique. That's personal one that I like. But sometimes color is the subject. And in the top picture, I went on a whale watching trip and I brought my book with me but we didn't see whales, but I noticed that the color of the sky was changing. So I just captured the changing of the color of the sky as the day went on. On the bottom, on the right side, I was on a trip to the Sierras and I just captured some of the colors of the wildflowers that were in the field. I drew one wildflower but all the others, I just captured the colors and that became the subject of what I was looking at. So the other thing you need is gear which can get cumbersome when you go into the field. There I have a complete set of carrying a folding chair, a camera, a pad, water and supplies. So the idea is to carry your stuff in a small container or whatever you can use that's gonna make it comfortable to take with you. That little pouch on the left is what I normally use. It contains my little watercolor kit and my pens and then I take a pad and I'm ready to go if I'm going locally. But one of the other important things is who are you gonna be doing this with? You can either do it by yourself or you can go into the field with friends. You each do your own work and but what's nice is at the end you can compare what you've done and get ideas from other people and see what they saw. So why journal? Why do this? Why go to this effort? And you do it for deliberate attention and it really focuses your attention. Actually I just saw on Facebook where I see a lot of things as we, I'm sure we all do, something that said disconnect from Wi-Fi and get better connected to nature. You learn and you appreciate, just in that little exercise we did, you start thinking and you start having, you start developing your curiosity and developing your observation skills. And it's also something you can do to go on adventures. It takes you to new places. You say, you know, I want to look at the beach and journal there. I want to go to the, to a park. So it gets you out and gets you going. There's something that I heard a few years ago that I really liked and that was called forest bathing. And that's a practice of immersing yourself in nature in a mindful way and using your senses wholly. And it's to derive benefits, mental, physical, emotional. And this term was developed, I guess Shinrin means forest and Yoko means bathing. I, pardon my translation and pronunciation. But the idea came about in Japan in the 1980s and it's been a tool for overcoming a lot of illnesses and the effects of a hectic life and a stressful environment. Here, we call it forest bathing, but I talk about it as nature bathing anytime you go out and you look at nature. There's also a couple that circumnavigated the world seven times with different crews. And one of the people who was interviewed and I'm paraphrasing now said, well, I don't have time to take out of my life to do that. And what Irving Johnson said to him is it's not time out of your life, it's time in your life. So this is time you're spending in your life in a very productive way. And particularly the second quote is when you write down your ideas, you automatically focus your full attention on them. Few, if any of us can write one thought and think another at the same time. Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools. And why I think about it and particularly some of the stresses of the past year when I've had my pencil and paper out and I am asking these kinds of questions and I'm observing nature, I really am pulled away from the day to day worries and struggles and it just takes you into a whole nother place and it's really an excellent benefit. So what is nature journaling? It's not just looking at nature and seeing it, it's not just experiencing it, although that's great. It's not just thinking about it, it's the writing it on the paper that completes that process. So how do you begin? Start. And I think sometimes that's the hardest part to actually start, you think about it, but you don't do it. But take the page out, try it, give it a few tries and see how you like it. You can take classes, there's so many online on Facebook, there are groups that do journaling, you can get ideas from others, go to the art store, look at techniques and tools. But the key is to start and keep on doing it. So here are some references. I have my own website and I have a Facebook page and I think Angela's gonna put this, actually you can put this in Angela into the chat that anybody can pick it up and I think you said you were gonna send it out afterwards. I just submitted it for you in the chat, so all the info is there now. So everybody can access it, yeah. And then Nature Journaling, I want to talk about John Muir Laws and his website is there and he has so many online classes and really is what I'll call the master of Nature Journaling. I've taken a couple of classes from him, workshops from him that were just excellent and inspirational, so I do encourage you to look at that. I have a one page blog on Nature Journaling and I sent that to Angela and I think she's gonna send that out too. And then on illustration, there's so many good sites for illustration. And with that, I bring you back to my art supplies and my news, my artistic news. And so with that, I open it up to questions for Angela if you have anything that you want to do now. I'll turn it back to you, Angela. Oh, thank you so much, Kim, that was wonderful and I think this is a good time. Like you said, we'll turn to the Q&A portion of our program. We have about 10 minutes more before four o'clock. So if anyone wants to submit questions in the chat that they'd like to have answered, please go ahead and do so now. You can click on the chat button and type your questions in the chat bar if you haven't done so already and then we'll answer those questions in first-term order. I think let's see, we have, you know what, I have a question. Has your focus or interest in nature journaling changed over the years? Yeah, has it evolved? How do you feel about that? I, yes, sometimes I would take a workshop and I would do it very intently for a while. And then I would put it aside for a while and pick it up again. Sometimes I would be focusing more on a particular area like botanical subjects and then other times I would focus, be a little bit more general. So it moves over time. It's not a constant same level of practice and I think that's one of the things that's nice about it. When I talk about it being for yourself, it's whatever removes you and how you want to move with it. Okay, we have just a fun question from Tracy. She said, excellent presentation in beautiful journals, but she wonders what are your muses' names? The names of your muses in the photo there. On the left is Butterscotch and on the right is Pepper. Aw, thank you. And they're good subjects. It looks like they'll sit still and look at you for a while so you can capture their image. Oh, yes. Yes. And chew on your pens and push things off your desk. So we have a question from William who wants to know if you know anything about this with your naturalist background, what's the current situation of the Monarch butterfly count? Do you know anything about the butterfly situation? I know a little bit about it and I know that the Monarch counts on the West Coast have really plummeted. They have plummeted lately and certainly the other ones on the other side of the Rockies that migrate down to Mexico, they had plummeted also. They had gotten a lot of attention. I don't think the West Coast got as much and I can't think the term for it but they were deemed as a threatened, I don't know the exact term for it, threatened species but they were not getting as much attention right now because of some other higher needs but those counts have really gone down. And I know there's a lot of discussion online about the tropical milkweed versus native milkweeds and in the tropical milkweeds, if you plant them, they'd suggest that you cut them down from October through February so that they don't transmit a virus that has been infecting the Monarchs but we could have a whole another discussion on Monarchs. Well, Monica wanted to say your presentation has been a wonderful and welcoming introduction to nature journaling and really appreciates it. Do you feel that this practice contributes to your scientific understanding? Sounds like it does. Absolutely, absolutely. I look a lot closer and even if I'm not writing it in my journal, I do think about it even when taking photographs. When I take a photograph of something, I'm observing more closely and I'm observing behaviors more closely. I also write a monthly blog about some of my photos and some of my observations. And so sometimes that same process really compliments all of those other things. Okay, all right. Let's see, lots of feedback. Thank you so much, great presentation. You've inspired people to give it a go. William has a question. Do you recommend using the plastic coated picture like birds, butterfly, field guides? I guess there are some of those plastic coated like fold out field guides. Is that what you mean, William? Like the brochures, trifold brochures and other things like that. I know it's great for ID when you're in the field. Is that what you mean? William, go ahead. I'm not sure what the focus of the question is because there's a whole lot of ways to answer that. If you want to study those pictures, that's great. If you're talking about the use of plastic, plastics not being environmentally friendly, that's a whole other aspect and topic. Some of those fold outs are good for the low in terms of identifying things. They do have some of the most common things that you can see in a particular area. So those are helpful. There are other ways of IDing things. There's a lot of apps for your phone. I mean, then you don't need a plastic guide. So I can't give a specific answer as are they good? I think. Hopefully that touched on some of it. Yeah, I think from Bill, William's answer, he said, yes. I think he was referring to using them in the field as field guides. Oh, okay. Yeah, so you can help identify what you're looking at. And which leads me to another question, whether it be a bird, a plant or other biological organisms in nature or natural phenomena, how do you identify these things that you're seeing if you don't know and how do you learn more? And I think Kim mentioned, you can use field guides. You have apps on your phone. I have tons of books. I just bought one on Wasps. I'm a big book person paper, but I use apps a lot. There's an app called iNaturalist. For that, you have to have a photo, but you can take a photo with your phone and it will help identify it. And it also puts it into a community database where other people can say, actually, I have a great example of this. I was just out on a well-watching trip and I took a picture of a shark. And now I've put that shark on iNaturalist and I've just labeled it as a shark because I do know it's a shark. It's not a bird, it's a shark. So I put that out there. And because of this community-sourced identification, people will come in and say, it's a shark or what kind of shark they think it is. And if somebody else puts it in, they may disagree and they'll put that disagreement and then you get running commentary. So I do use a lot of websites, books, knowledge of others. I belong to several organizations because I've wanted to learn. And as I said, I've used my journal to draw something or I've just taken a photo and not known what it is in the field, but then I can come back and look it up. Especially if you have a lot of description. Burders often will write a lot of detail in the description of what they see. They'll talk about, well, it had a downward tail flicking and it had a rounded head and it had white wingbars. So being as descriptive as you can helps to bring it to someone who can help identify it. That's a really great question. Those apps are really helpful in nature. And I just posted in the chat for anyone who's interested in naturalist apps. You can download the following onto your devices for IDing plants or animals, other things in nature. There's iNaturalist, there's Audubon app for birds and bird calls. There's also the Cornell Lab of Ornithology apps. Merlin, I forgot to add Merlin, that's the one I think that Cornell, is that the one that Cornell runs is Merlin? Yeah, Merlin is, yeah. That's good for identifying birds. Yeah, and then there's eBird, there's Seek. Another one is called Seek, I think. Yeah, Seek is done by the people who do iNaturalist. Come. All right, wonderful. Okay, so we have one other question. If I'm not a creative person, I mean, can I still do nature journaling? Sounds like you can. You can do it with just about any skill level. Yes, yes. And actually I heard somebody say, if you have a really nice picture, make sure the next page is messy so that you're not afraid to write in your journal again. Because if you're always concerned about having the best illustration or the being is that creative, then you're not gonna do it. But the more you do it, the more you become creative. The more you do develop skills. As in anything in life, the more you do it, the more you learn and the better you get. Wonderful. Lots of people saying thank you so much for the wonderful presentation and the informative introduction to nature journaling. And I just wanna mention and follow up what you said. Everyone, if you have more questions or interested in nature journaling, scientific or botanical illustration, financial history, planter, animal ID, related topics. We have many books and other resources in our library's general collections, including the book that by the author that Kim mentioned, John Muir Laws. The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling is kind of a comprehensive getting started guide. We do have that in our collection, along with many others on botanical illustration, sketching in nature, and all sorts of fun stuff. So please go ahead and check out our online catalog on our website or contact library staff from our info or let me know in the chat. Now, we are at 4 p.m. now. So if anyone needs to leave right away, now we wanna thank you again for joining us. And if you have other questions for Kim and you can't stay any longer, please leave a message in the chat with your name and email contact info. And Kim can follow up with you at a later time. Otherwise, we'll hang around until 4 p.m. and then we'll end the program. We do have a few comments. Kim, I'm just gonna actually stop your presentation or if you wanna stop the share. I can stop my share. The space is perfect. Okay. We have a wonderful, we get to see you up close. So William has a question about art stores and where do you buy your supplies? Do you go to any brick and mortar stores or do you go to Amazon or how do you do that? I do a lot by Amazon in particular during the pandemic but one store that I particularly like is called Art Supply Warehouse down in Westminster. ASW it's called or Art Supply Warehouse and they just have a phenomenal set of art supplies. There's also staples. I mean, they have good supplies too and Michaels. Okay, wonderful. And Laura said, thank you Kim for the lovely presentation. And she mentioned that John Muir Laws also had dozens of videos to watch on Nature Journaling 2 on his website if you want tips and techniques and how to draw different types of bird, especially he loves birds, he loves all sorts of things and it's a wonderful website and you can sign up on his email list in fact and he'll send out his email updates to you with his programs that are coming and they're all free which is the wonderful thing. They're free unless you wanna make a donation to support his programming. So that's a wonderful resource. I highly recommend looking at his stuff and you'll get a lot more in depth and I can give you in 30 minutes here. Yes. And so please everyone, if you wanted to get lists of some of those supply lists that Kim mentioned, I included them in the chat earlier. So feel free to take this opportunity while we still have some time in the next few minutes. You can copy and paste that now into a document or a document or an email of your own just to save before the program ends. I will also be submitting that in an email after this program is over. We have to go through video editing and all that jazz but once we get that video loaded onto our LBPL YouTube channel then I will be sending out an email to everyone. Gonna go live here so like you can see me too. So that way we'll be sending that email out. It'll have the link to the archived video on YouTube. It will also have these supply lists that Kim has offered to us and I put in the chat. We will also be including a separate email and attachment in that email with more information that Kim has prepared for you. So if you have any other questions, we will be hanging out for just a few more minutes. Let me see if we have anything. I think, well, it looks like we are pretty much ready to wrap up unless folks have questions. We're just gonna hang out and feel free to think about it and submit. We'll hang out for a few more minutes. Kim, I was just so impressed with your nature journaling. I mean, obviously you're a very talented artist but I'm so inspired by all of the amazing work that you've done and Kim has an amazing website to you guys. If you haven't seen it, you should definitely go to it. It's in the chat. I put the link in there and she shows you not only a lot of the nature journaling she's done but also her amazing photography and you have blogging that you do on the website too, don't you? Yes. You have a blog, right? Yes. And then if anybody's interested in... Oh, go ahead. I'm so sorry. Oh, I was gonna say if people don't have questions, I have a question for the remaining people. Is there one aspect of this that you thought was a good takeaway that you think you might use or you found interesting or useful? And you could put that in the chat. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Do you have any feedback on the presentation, things that you liked or that you found useful? Feel free to add that. We do have a question from Tracy. Have you tackled observations that are fleeting? A colorful bird, for example, that blows past you? You know, it also brought to mind the sketch that you did of the ocean on your well watch when you didn't have wills to observe but you were looking at the fleeting nature of the sun and the clouds moving by and it seems like you can do a lot. Like you said, even with things that are passing, yeah, that are passing you by in nature. How would you respond to that? Just capturing, you know, if you saw a... Swallows are really hard to capture but you could just do, just capturing the feeling that you had of trying to see that swallow. You know, I only caught a flash of blue but they move so fast. Just the fact that they move fast is something to capture and observe. That's wonderful. Glenda wants to know, can you tell us how you made the watercolor tin attaching it to your wrist? I believe that was a Velcro strap, like a Velcro watch bin and I think that I used crazy glue just to glue it on. That was so clever. I was just remarking to Jade, our senior librarian who's here, lying wingman in the background for our program. Just how clever your Altoids box was and being able to pull all that together. Oh, it just makes things so much easier to have those quick and easy fail safe things in the field that don't take up a lot of space and you can just kind of pack and go. And we have some comments here from Liz. Her main takeaway is just to start, just to start and to remember there is no right or wrong. Teresa said the first takeaway, Teresa's takeaway is that you can start simple and don't have to worry about someone's idea of not, you know, not perfection. You don't need to have perfection. William is commenting, he found an interesting book called How to be a Bad Bird Watcher. It's a very good read. He says it's a very good read and he points out that it's a wonderful hobby and he loved your presentation, by the way. Thank you. Let's see. Matt is saying he hasn't done journaling before but his takeaway from your presentation has given him ideas to implement in an RPG style journal for school, which is great. You're inspiring people for programming that they can do running their classrooms or working with their kids. Yes. That's great. That is wonderful. And Teresa says she's definitely going to try the Altoid Box. Good. I think I'm going to answer that. I'm going to pick up the question you're asking. I think it's a question of what is your opinion about nature or pain? Getting ideas. I think I got some of those ideas from some Facebook groups, like nature journaling and you can just search nature journaling in Facebook and you can find a group for anything these days and you get lots of ideas from those. That is so true. And one thing I wanted to comment on too for folks who are interested self-study and getting out there, but they're also focused groups or programs that you can go through to become a naturalist and to learn more about all the stuff that you're seeing out there in nature. And Kim, I mentioned earlier that she's a certified naturalist through the Los Angeles Coastal California Master Naturalist Program. So I can include in the link in the chat, if I have time before the end of the program, or definitely in the email I send out, I can include links to those to our local Master Naturalist programs. I know there's one through the Dominguez Rancho Museum. They have one there. And where is your program spot? Who sponsors your program, the LA Coastal California Master Naturalist Program? I think if we just look it up online, we can find the link and put it in the chat for you. Yeah, the one I had done was at a C-Lab up in Rondondo Beach. I don't know if they're still having it right now. Right. So we'll try to find out that information, either put it in the chat or send it to everyone in an email. So you have access to that. I heartily encourage you to check out those naturalist programs if you want to learn more, even as a newbie without any background or experience. That's what they're intended for. They're intended for people at all skill levels and they start you at the beginning and work your way through. I went through a Master Naturalist Program when I lived on the East Coast and it was wonderful as a new transplant to the East Coast. I was living in Virginia and it just opened my eyes to everything in the natural world around me. Every topic, every subject area of natural history you learn about and that relates to your local area. So it's really amazing. And again, do check out our catalog online for more information too. Okay. So we have many people thanking you for just this wonderful presentation. We're getting, Kim, did you have any other comments before I wrap things up here? No, I just wanted to thank everyone else for sitting, hanging in with it and for the nice thank yous back. Okay, well, we're getting pretty close to 4.15, everyone. We're gonna wrap up our program here, but I'd like to thank you, Kim, for your time and your generous support of the educational enrichment of our Long Beach Public Library community and people from much further afield. But this being posted on Eventbrite, that's national. So we may have people joining us from all over the country. For all I know, even out of the country. And I'd also like to thank all of our guests who joined us today for this Art of Nature lecture series program. We thank you so much for your support and for following us. I'd also like to thank our library administration and staff, friends of the library, our LBPL Foundation, many other local contacts for helping to promote our event. So our sincerest thanks and appreciation to all of you. Have a wonderful evening, everyone. Stay safe and healthy. And we look forward to seeing you again soon for more upcoming programs with the Miller Room and the Long Beach Public Library. Thanks again and good evening everyone.