Here’s a fun warm-up activity to start a nature journaling or urban sketching session: the 4 Directions. It takes about 10 minutes to do, or even less if you only do 1-minute sketches.
Use it to…
- place yourself in the landscape
- hone your spacial awareness
- create deep memory and recall
How to do it:
- Draw a large X on your paper. You can make it landscape or portrait, depending on the page format of your journal.
- In the center, make a small circle. (That’s you.)
- Face North*.
- In the top wedge, make a 2-minute sketch of what you see.
- Turn 90° to your right (East) and rotate your journal counter-clockwise.
- Sketch for 2 minutes.
- Turn and sketch twice more until you are back at the start.
* If you don’t have a compass, no worries! Just face any direction and turn 90°.
Each of the direction sketches will be oriented to the center, and if you were to cut the lines and fold them up, you would be in the middle, looking around at the scenes you sketched.
Background:
This activity came to be when I was the host of a monthly sketching group in the Bay Area. We kicked off each meetup with a warm-up. One day I didn’t have anything prepared, and was feeling a little desperate. I kept turning around, looking for inspiration, and then it occurred to me that turning around was the inspiration.
We did the 4 Directions together as a group and it was really simple, and surprisingly fun. Since then, I’ve done this as an activity many times, and it’s always been delightful.
Give it a try and share it with others!
More background & adaptations:
This way of turning and observing and appreciating the surroundings has deep history in many cultures. In the Diné culture of the Southwest United States, the Navajo Beauty-way Teaching includes the prayer:
In beauty, I walk
With beauty before me, I walk
With beauty behind me, I walk
With beauty above me, I walk
With beauty around me, I walk
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
Quoted from: shamaniceducation.org/pathways-to-hozho/
You can adapt the 4 Directions to include above and below, making it 6 Directions. You can also take special note of beauty moments as you sketch what you see at each direction.
Adding a wash of color to the sketches can make them more readable and more resonant, which marks these moments of attention and embeds them more deeply into your memory.
Examples:
Here are a few examples of the Four Directions from journaling sessions. (Tap or click to enlarge.)
