Goal

Observe your environment carefully and learn about your own perspective on these places and the species within them

Outcome

Observational sketches

Starting point A: No pre-defined area
Go out there and find a spot that interests you. Things to pay attention to could be places where plants and animal habitats intersect with the city landscape. Perhaps an insect making a home inside somewaste left behind, or plants growing around a structure in a park. You don’t need to have a preconceived idea of what you want to achieve here, let your intuition be your guide.
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Starting point B: Pre-defined area 
In this case you already have an area in which you want to make an intervention. Examples could be a park bench or sculpture, or perhaps you want to renovate your garden.
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Once you’ve found your spot (don’t overthink this step), it’s time to get sketching. My recommendation is an A5 sketchbook with an ink pen, my preference is 0.3 mm tip. Now try to sketch what you see, it can be simple at first. The average length of a sketch is about 15 minutes for me. Let yourself be immersed in the moment of concentration on your environment. Although it may not be at first, it should be quite relaxing. Repeat this a few times or until you feel satisfied with what you have noticed. Remember it is not about the quality of the outcome but the process. It is also important to not have too many expectations for what you will observe, some sketches end up being inconsequential. You can’t do this step incorrectly. Check out the examples below to get a feel of what we’re looking for.

Benefits

There are many reasons to use sketching as way to facilitate the observation of natural environments. As designers, we may not have the ecological expertise to know what to look for. But we may have visualisation skills that can help us to observe and capture.

Once you have some sketches, take a look at them and see if any patterns emerge. In the process of sketching you made many decisions, probably some subconsciously. Think about why you chose to sketch a particular spot, why did you frame it in this way, did you draw the background or only the foreground? How did you decide to use lines to show it, did you use shading, is there a lot of detail, what did you decide to skip?

By breaking these choices down, you get some insight into your own perspective, how you view the world and what you choose to look at. Continuously doing this process can help you to understand your relation to other species and how you view them. Are you willing to give your attention to them, can you begin to understand how they live and potentially share the space you will intervene in?