We haven’t had a day without rain for well over a week this January here in East Devon, UK. Every day, the skies are grey, the wind is blowing, and the rain falls either in fits and starts or in a continuous deluge. It has been hugely uninspiring to want to get out and doing any artwork, so I’ve had to work hard to keep my motivation up. I’ve thought up three great ways for you to keep motivated when the weather isn’t what we’d like it to be.
#1 Immerse
The first option is to lump it and get stuck in anyway. That means piling on the waterproofs and embracing the bad weather. This week I’ve been walking at the seafront after the storm, seeing the waves lashing at the beach and feeling the spray on my face. It’s exhilerating being out in unfavourable weather sometimes, even if it just a quick step out of the front door and into the rain. I didn’t take my nature journal with me (it would have gotten rather wet) but I came back and wrote something about the experience.
Another option is to immerse yourself by nature journaling from the indoors. I took part in the Great Garden Birdwatch last Sunday, although the weather conditions were not so good, and I didn’t see half as many birds as I would have liked, I challenged myself to just sit in one place in the studio, looking out the window, for a whole hour. I had my journal open in front of me, and I wrote whatever I noticed (birds or not) and did quick sketches. After that hour of just sitting on my meditation cushion with my nature journal, I felt much more relaxed and connected in to myself and my environment. Time seemed to slow down too, in life we can get a bit frantic and time goes by at quite the pace, but when you challenge yourself to just sit and observe for an hour it is amazing how much the pace slows down. I might have even felt slightly bored once or twice, that is such a privilege! (I am very much of the belief that a moment or two of boredom is good for us, especially now we want to squash it by immediately reaching for our phones…)
#2 Reminisce
The second option is to just look back at a time when the weather conditions were better, that is, take the time to catch up your nature journal with an older experience. I’ve been using this bad weather time to continue my Microseasons nature journaling project for 2025. I am about halfway through this project at time of writing, having been so busy through the summer that I didn’t add many pages. So I am using this bad weather time to catch up through all the photos and memories I gathered last year.
One of the great benefits of this is the opportunity to look back and make more of work that was done earlier in the year. For example, you might have had an amazing outdoor nature journaling experience that you recorded in words and quick sketch form that you would now like to work up into a piece of artwork or writing. Perhaps you spotted a species that you’d like to make a dedicated page about and spend more time researching. Rather than letting the bad weather get you down, use the opportunity to stay in with a cup of tea and a sketchbook, gather up your photos and/or old sketches and get stuck in to making a special page about that experience.
#3 Elevate
The final idea is to spend the time developing your skills so that you’re ready to go when the weather improves. It might be trying out a new medium by doing some swatching, or taking some classes in art or sketching, or doing some research on identifying different species. Personally, I am working through a backlog of classes from last year’s Wild Wonder Conference, which I haven’t finished yet. I often find that most of my skills development happens in winter, for example this winter I have studied and swatched out all the Polychromos range of coloured pencils. So then by the time the good weather rolls round again, I am ready to go with my newfound skills.
If you’d like to develop a new skill, there’s loads of different tutorials available in the Nature Journaling Circle, from colour theory and blending to fungi ID and graphite drawing skills. I have also just released a new course Illustrated Journal Layout and Composition for when you know what you want to put in your nature journal, but are not sure how you’d like to arrange the elements. You can get 10% off this course with the code LAUNCH10 until 15th February 2026. There’s also the course guide and template pack available here (minus the video content of the full course) for just £5.
