I’m a nature artist and I hate drawing on location.

There. I said it.

If you love drawing on location, your inclination might be to convince me of the near-miraculous benefits of location drawing; but let’s take a pause. If you love drawing on location, I love that for you! You’re doing a thing that brings you so much joy!

I see y’all out there sharing your Patreon and YouTube videos about packing your location drawing kits and plonking down in the grass to swelter in the sun or freeze in the chilly wind to paint or draw the stunning landscapes before you. I love your videos and watch them whenever I get a chance.

I’m not writing this for you. I’m writing this for the artists who feel pressured to draw on location, to feel validated by doing The Thing you’re supposed to do if you’re a nature artist. I’m writing this to let them know that not every nature artist likes to draw or paint outdoors and that it’s fine. It doesn’t mean anything about your cred as a nature artist. It just means you don’t like or don’t want to pack up half your studio and make art outside.

We’re all wired differently.

My husband loves “fry an egg on the sidewalk” sunny days. I love Lorelai Gilmore “I smell snow” cold days. Gouache is my preferred paint most days but maybe yours is watercolor. Green has (quite sneakily) become my favorite color and maybe you can’t stand green.

Different brush strokes for different artist folks.

Some of my favorite Patreon and YouTube artists, like Emma Carlisle, Sarah Dyer, Frances Ives, Melanie Chadwick, and Sandi Hester, are prolific sketchbook artists who happily worship at the church of Location Drawing. Their videos are calming and fascinating to me, but for a while those videos left me wondering if I was missing something because I didn’t draw on location.

Just to be sure, I tried it a few times and can confirm it’s not my thing.

The reasons don’t matter (the elements, the annoyance, intrusive people, etc). What matters to me is letting go of the expectation that there’s a correct way to be an artist. Honoring the truth that what fascinates me about other artists’ art doesn’t need to be part of my art practice AND that just because an algorithm is smothering me with a specific type of art content doesn’t mean that’s THE way I should be making art.

If you love drawing on location, I love that for you! If you know that location drawing isn’t your jam, I love that for you! And if you feel like location drawing isn’t your jam but you’ve been trying to force it, here’s me saying it’s ok to let it go, artist.

Make art however and wherever you want!

Find a process that brings you joy and follow that process in your favorite location whether it’s in the great outdoors, in your cozy studio, or tucked in a kitchen corner.

Since location drawing isn’t for me, I have a foundational list of nature inspiration to draw from:

Personal Photos

My phone’s camera roll is filled with pictures of my dogs, my art, and about 10,000 snaps of landscapes, flowers, animals, textures, insects, vegetables, trees, seascapes, clouds, and any other thing that feels like something I might make art about.

Take photos from many different angles so you’ve got options!

Collections

Pick flowers to paint. Buy flowers to fill your studio with inspiration. Press and dry your flowers, uncovering a whole new way of understanding them.

Collect leaves, acorns, bird nests, feathers, twigs, shells, mushrooms, and any other gifts from nature.

Paint What You Grow

Inspiration is waiting in your flower beds, your vegetable garden, your container herbs, your assorted pots of flowers.

Take photos of what you grow. Pick flowers from your garden. Arrange them in a vase and then paint them. Or pull the petals apart to explore parts of the flower and paint from a new perspective on them.

Pick vegetables from your garden and create a seasonal still life. Sketch the vegetables as you chop them up for a meal.

Nature Cam

Drawing from video can push the artist to capture more lively gestures than drawing from still photos and lucky for us, there are many nature cams to inspire us.

My favorites are:

Of course even though we love the liveliness of drawing from video, we’ve also got the power to pause the videos to get a better look!

Reference Photos

In addition to my personal library of nature photos, I also use references from stock photo libraries. Unsplash and Pexels are a couple of free options while Adobe Stock and Shutterstock are two paid sites I use from time to time when I need a more specific reference than I can find on the free sites.

Vintage Books

There isn’t much I love more than a bookshelf filled with vintage flora and fauna books to inspire my creative wanderings. Many “what should I draw today” moments have been cured by grabbing a vintage book, opening it to a random page, and drawing or painting something inspired by what I see on the page.

Browse through secondhand bookshops whenever you get a chance. You never know what treasures you might stumble upon. I live in a small town with no bookshops (tragic, I know) so I hunt on Etsy and Ebay for vintage flora and fauna book treasures.

Do you have a favorite source for nature art inspiration too? Comment and share!