In my nature journaling project for 2025, I am following the Japanese calendar of 72 microseasons (little ‘seasons’ of about 5 days each). I am painting a journal spread for each microseason I identify and writing a little description to accompany it. This year, I am using only art in this journal to convey the changes through the year, no dates and no words on the pages themselves. This is forcing a creative and responsive artistic method, new to my nature journaling practice so far.
Apologies on the delay for this blog – because of the nature of this page (waiting for plants to press), and my desire to group similar subjects for YouTube, I needed to wait a little while before completing this. I will now be speeding up, I promise!
Season #5 (15-19 January): New Growth on the Ground
All winter, the earth has settled under the rain to a deep brown, scattered with the disintegrating remains of last year’s leaves. Now the first signs of lush vegetation to come emerge among the old leaves and bark chippings. The hearts of celandine, tiny to begin with, then reaching high for the light on slender stalks. Rosettes of bittercress and the flush of primrose, those textured leaves of bright new green. With them, the cleavers, the golden saxifrage, the dog violet.
Each day, watch the new leaves spread and grow. Watch them cluster in great mounds, watch them strive upward and outward through the chill of the continued frost, and long dark nights. They seek the brightening dawns, the moments of warmth in the central hour of the day. The new leaves are an emblem, a hopeful moment of the brighter days to come.
The Page
The Process
In traditional flower and leaf pressing artworks, the pressings are arranged to create patterns or designs against a white, coloured paper, or minimally painted background. On this page, I aimed to recreate a slightly more realistic scene to represent the growth of each of these plants. When gathering the fresh foliage for pressing, I took most of each plant, fully uprooting it from the garden.
I chose to represent the wooded corner by the studio, so felt no qualms at all about a little like light weeding. I split each plant, leaf by leaf, directly into the press. It was a dry day, so there was no need to dry the specimens first.
If you’d like to learn more about gathering and processing, and different pressing techniques, I have a class all about it in the Nature Journaling Circle. All classes can be purchased separately or accessed via the membership.
The background was painted using Derwent Inktense in a simplistic style. Background painting methods are also included in the tutorial. I included a couple of simple ivy leaves in the painting, as these are commonplace climbing the studio panels.
Two weeks later, the pressings were removed from the press and laid out ready to create the design. I reassembled the plants based on reference photos, leading to a flattened version of the original plant. The final page satisfactorily reflects the early spring growth in the wooded part of the garden.
The Video
You can watch the process of creating this pressed leaf design, including a look at the practice pages, in this vlog.
Want to have a go yourself? The Nature Journaling Circle membership is a welcoming space for you to learn field sketching and other nature journaling skills with me. There’s a monthly live tutorial and a social session, plus access to all my pre-recorded video courses and a community of lovely nature journalers from around the world. If that’s something you might be interested in, consider joining us here.
