This book is in high demand at my library. Art books in general get checked out a lot, especially bird and botanical arts books, especially Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling. I haven't completed all the exercises yet, but I've done enough for an overall impression.

Few art books encompass most nature subjects. This one and many others have a lot of birds, sure. There's a clique for nature people who are foremost bird people. I don't specialize in birds, but I don't want to exclude them either. This book, like many art books, also has a lot of flowers. I'm a plant person, and after the bird people I've always felt like the next big nature people clique are the garden people. I'm not a garden person, but wild plants flower too, and flowers are fun to draw and paint. One section in this book includes landscape elements like water, rocks, and clouds, which are also often in many nature art books that don't specialize in birds and blooms. But this book has more, and this is where it becomes unique. It includes bears, lizards, frogs, ladybugs, caterpillars, spider webs, bark, leaves, and branches. After all, journaling isn't about picking the stereotypical picturesque, it's cataloging everything.

Other than nature subjects, Laws Guide also spans many mediums. There is graphite, colored pencil, watercolor pencil, water-soluble pens, water color, and gouache used in various exercises. Something I additionally appreciate is the use of the white colored pencil and the white gel pen for accents in the fur and feathers.

I'm not keen on Laws's subject style, but considering this is a book on journaling and not a general art improvement book, I don't see a point in evaluating his style. Journaling is meant to be simple and loose. I do, however, like Laws's composition style. For instance, a hawk will be on a branch with a rectangular offset backdrop instead of a full background, and then notes placed in the quadrant of the page that's diagonal from the backdrop. It's artsy, but functional and not time consuming. It also makes me think of the days of naturalist explorers, so it has an adventurous feel.

I'm not ecstatic about this book in the way that I am about other five star art books. This book is less about feeling empowered by it's beauty and excellent teaching style, but more about fulfilling an important niche and doing so effectively, so I'm excited all the same. It's a 4.5. ( )