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Exploring Vancouver Naturehoods: An Artist’s Sketchbook Journal by Vicky Earle (Midtown Press / Sandhill Marketing)
Review by Janet Nicol
The blue-eyed-darner is a magical dragonfly with blue and white colouring, but did you know this four-winged insect existed 70 million years before dinosaurs?
The dragonfly is just one of more than 130 images captured by author-illustrator Vicky Earle in Exploring Vancouver Naturehoods: An Artist’s Sketchbook Journal. A visual feast of west coast wildlife and plants, Earle used graphite, ink and watercolours, annotating each sketch with informative, playful and sometimes quirky text. At the sketchbook’s end, Earle offers helpful tips for those interested in keeping their own nature journal. She is the perfect guide, being a professional illustrator in the fields of natural science, medicine and botany.
Like most people, Earle slowed down and paid more attention to her surroundings during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sketches for this book were done during that time, from 2020 to 2022. Her invitation to the reader to make a “green date” and head outdoors with a sketchbook in the wake of the lockdowns will likely find a receptive audience. “The book grew from a desire to help people connect more meaningfully with nature,” Earle writes. She also contends that people’s health and well-being improve around nature, and the goal of environmental protection is better served as people learn more about, and connect with, the flora and fauna in their neighbourhoods.
Each sketch is accompanied with the calendar date it was drawn. Sometimes Earle jotted down a brief weather report beside a sketch. She also provides Latin descriptors of animals and plants, interesting scientific facts and her personal observations. While the author’s knowledge may appear intimidating to the novice, she doesn’t see it that way, suggesting, for example, to do additional searches on the internet for assistance with the identification of a bird species.
Still, it does take talent—and a bit of luck—to sketch the tiny male rufous hummingbird and paint in the red and orange colouring along the male bird’s throat. One of Earle’s techniques is to complete a quick drawing in the field and fill in the details at home. She says it’s helpful to take a photograph of the subject with an iPhone or camera for later reference.
It’s not only visual stimuli that nature lovers can tap into; they can listen, too, as Earle does with the hummingbird: “The sound of their buzzing wings always reminds me of miniature helicopters.”
You don’t have to go great distances to find inspiration, Earle writes in her first chapter, “Close to Home.” She cites the time when a Cooper’s hawk shooed away all the song birds outside her window and took over the space. It gave Earle the opportunity to draw a profile of the large feathery bird, with its sharp-looking eye and black-blue beak, as she safely studied it from inside her home.
The second chapter, “Vancouver Parks,” features treasures found in eleven green spaces, each illustrated with an aerial drawing. For example, Earle’s sketch of Trout Lake, in the heart of the city’s residential east side, is beautifully depicted in a thumbnail landscape with the blue and snow-white mountains in the distance. Along the lake, the author sighted all manner of wildlife, including the American coot, an aquatic bird with blue-green “lobed” feet that reminded her of fishnet stockings.
A shy, bright yellow Wilson’s warbler is known to dart around the rose bushes at Stanley Park. Earle’s advice is to carry binoculars to find similar sightings. Her drawing of the warbler includes a black colouring atop its head and comes with the comment, “he has a toupee!”
Packing a magnifying lens while venturing in open spaces is another tip from the author. At Quilchena Park, Earle found a yellow jelly-like fungus, called “witch’s Butter,” on rotting wood. She also discovered “Angel Wings,” a type of mushroom that looks like cascading oysters along a walking trail at Pacific Spirit Park. The mushrooms are a pure white colour, and so is “old man’s beard,” a feathery vine blanketing trees and shrubs at Everett Crowley Park.
A detailed drawing of the blue-petalled chicory, a flower belonging to the daisy family, was sketched at Deering Island Park. This plant’s roots can be roasted and used as a coffee substitute.
There’s much more of nature’s bounty depicted in this book, from insects to everyday squirrels and racoons to the single leaf of the sycamore maple. Coyotes aren’t mentioned, interestingly enough, given the tensions caused by human encounters with the creatures in Stanley Park in recent years. The author did, however, take a look at the little brown bat by studying these natural pest-controllers (they can eat 600 mosquitos in one hour) at Stanley Park Nature House. She suggests that intrepid readers who want more, can look for bats as they emerge to hunt insects in the early evening at dusk.
Even if bat watching isn’t on your personal radar, Earle offers many other inspiring ideas for every level of artist and nature lover. The information conveyed in her sketchbook promotes a greater awareness of all living things, great and small. For those readers who commit to making green dates with a journal, she offers a great prompt to get started, borrowed from her mentor, naturalist John Muir Laws: “I notice, I wonder and it reminds me of…” 9781988242484
Janet Nicol is a Vancouver-based freelance writer, retired high school teacher and long-time sketchbook enthusiast.
[BCBW 2023]
Review by Janet Nicol
The blue-eyed-darner is a magical dragonfly with blue and white colouring, but did you know this four-winged insect existed 70 million years before dinosaurs?
The dragonfly is just one of more than 130 images captured by author-illustrator Vicky Earle in Exploring Vancouver Naturehoods: An Artist’s Sketchbook Journal. A visual feast of west coast wildlife and plants, Earle used graphite, ink and watercolours, annotating each sketch with informative, playful and sometimes quirky text. At the sketchbook’s end, Earle offers helpful tips for those interested in keeping their own nature journal. She is the perfect guide, being a professional illustrator in the fields of natural science, medicine and botany.
Like most people, Earle slowed down and paid more attention to her surroundings during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sketches for this book were done during that time, from 2020 to 2022. Her invitation to the reader to make a “green date” and head outdoors with a sketchbook in the wake of the lockdowns will likely find a receptive audience. “The book grew from a desire to help people connect more meaningfully with nature,” Earle writes. She also contends that people’s health and well-being improve around nature, and the goal of environmental protection is better served as people learn more about, and connect with, the flora and fauna in their neighbourhoods.
Each sketch is accompanied with the calendar date it was drawn. Sometimes Earle jotted down a brief weather report beside a sketch. She also provides Latin descriptors of animals and plants, interesting scientific facts and her personal observations. While the author’s knowledge may appear intimidating to the novice, she doesn’t see it that way, suggesting, for example, to do additional searches on the internet for assistance with the identification of a bird species.
Still, it does take talent—and a bit of luck—to sketch the tiny male rufous hummingbird and paint in the red and orange colouring along the male bird’s throat. One of Earle’s techniques is to complete a quick drawing in the field and fill in the details at home. She says it’s helpful to take a photograph of the subject with an iPhone or camera for later reference.
It’s not only visual stimuli that nature lovers can tap into; they can listen, too, as Earle does with the hummingbird: “The sound of their buzzing wings always reminds me of miniature helicopters.”
You don’t have to go great distances to find inspiration, Earle writes in her first chapter, “Close to Home.” She cites the time when a Cooper’s hawk shooed away all the song birds outside her window and took over the space. It gave Earle the opportunity to draw a profile of the large feathery bird, with its sharp-looking eye and black-blue beak, as she safely studied it from inside her home.
The second chapter, “Vancouver Parks,” features treasures found in eleven green spaces, each illustrated with an aerial drawing. For example, Earle’s sketch of Trout Lake, in the heart of the city’s residential east side, is beautifully depicted in a thumbnail landscape with the blue and snow-white mountains in the distance. Along the lake, the author sighted all manner of wildlife, including the American coot, an aquatic bird with blue-green “lobed” feet that reminded her of fishnet stockings.
A shy, bright yellow Wilson’s warbler is known to dart around the rose bushes at Stanley Park. Earle’s advice is to carry binoculars to find similar sightings. Her drawing of the warbler includes a black colouring atop its head and comes with the comment, “he has a toupee!”
Packing a magnifying lens while venturing in open spaces is another tip from the author. At Quilchena Park, Earle found a yellow jelly-like fungus, called “witch’s Butter,” on rotting wood. She also discovered “Angel Wings,” a type of mushroom that looks like cascading oysters along a walking trail at Pacific Spirit Park. The mushrooms are a pure white colour, and so is “old man’s beard,” a feathery vine blanketing trees and shrubs at Everett Crowley Park.
A detailed drawing of the blue-petalled chicory, a flower belonging to the daisy family, was sketched at Deering Island Park. This plant’s roots can be roasted and used as a coffee substitute.
There’s much more of nature’s bounty depicted in this book, from insects to everyday squirrels and racoons to the single leaf of the sycamore maple. Coyotes aren’t mentioned, interestingly enough, given the tensions caused by human encounters with the creatures in Stanley Park in recent years. The author did, however, take a look at the little brown bat by studying these natural pest-controllers (they can eat 600 mosquitos in one hour) at Stanley Park Nature House. She suggests that intrepid readers who want more, can look for bats as they emerge to hunt insects in the early evening at dusk.
Even if bat watching isn’t on your personal radar, Earle offers many other inspiring ideas for every level of artist and nature lover. The information conveyed in her sketchbook promotes a greater awareness of all living things, great and small. For those readers who commit to making green dates with a journal, she offers a great prompt to get started, borrowed from her mentor, naturalist John Muir Laws: “I notice, I wonder and it reminds me of…” 9781988242484
Janet Nicol is a Vancouver-based freelance writer, retired high school teacher and long-time sketchbook enthusiast.
[BCBW 2023]
