Why wildflowers reward the walking sketcher

Most subjects you meet on a country walk refuse to sit still. Skylarks vanish, clouds rearrange themselves, and that lovely view is gone the moment the sun moves behind a hill. Wildflowers are different. They hold their pose for as long as you need, they come in manageable sizes, and there is almost always another one a few paces further along the verge.

The real pleasure, though, is what happens to your eye. Sketching a plant forces you to slow down long enough to notice that the umbel you assumed was cow parsley has finer, more feathery leaves than you thought — perhaps it is rough chervil. Draw the same plants through a spring and summer and you will start to recognise them by silhouette alone. The sketchbook quietly becomes a field guide you wrote yourself.

A kit light enough to forget you're carrying it

The temptation is to take everything. Resist it. A small pouch that fits in the top of a rucksack is ideal, and you should be able to open it, find a pencil and start drawing within thirty seconds.

• A5 or A6 hardback sketchbook with cartridge paper around 140gsm. A hardback means you can draw standing up, resting the book on your forearm. Spiral-bound is fine if you keep a board behind the page.
• Two pencils — an HB or 2B for line, a 4B for shadow. Soft graphite smudges less than you fear on smooth paper.
• A putty rubber and a small sharpener, plus a bulldog clip for breezy days and a plastic bag for sudden showers.
• A small watercolour tin of twelve half pans and a water brush, if you want colour without the fuss of a jar.
• A hand lens, if you have one. Ten seconds with a lens before you draw will change how the flower head looks on the page.

A folded foam mat or a light gardening kneeler is worth its weight. Lots of the best wildflowers grow at ankle height, and you will draw far better sitting comfortably than crouching and wobbling.

Quick pencil studies: five minutes, not fifty

The habit that makes a walking sketchbook work is speed. Aim for several loose studies rather than one polished drawing, and give each plant about five minutes.

• Start with the gesture. One light line for the overall height and lean of the stem, drawn without taking the pencil off the page.
• Block the flower head as a shape first. A disc for a daisy, a bell for a bluebell, an umbrella for anything in the carrot family. Resist petals until the shape is right.
• Check proportions with the pencil. Hold it at arm's length, thumb marking the flower head's size, then compare that measurement with the stem length. This one habit will fix most of your errors.
• Draw leaves where they actually join the stem — opposite or alternate — rather than where you assume they should be.
• Add tone sparingly. The side of a 4B on the shadow side of a stem is usually enough.

Then draw the same plant again, once as a whole and once as a single flower head enlarged. Those two views together teach you more than a dozen careful copies.

Colour notes that mean something later

If you paint, work pencil first and colour second. Light changes and rain arrives, and a finished line drawing is a complete record on its own.

When you do reach for the tin, mix your greens rather than using a ready-made leaf green. A yellow with a touch of blue and the smallest hint of red gives a far more convincing stem, and you can warm or cool it depending on whether the plant is in sun or shade.

• Test every mix as a small dab in the margin and label it in words: "stem — olive, warm", "petal — cool pink, grey shadow".
• Note the light and the weather. Overcast, low sun, backlit — this explains half the colour choices you made.
• Keep colour loose. A few confident strokes over your pencil lines will read better than a fully painted flower, and take a fraction of the time.

Simple composition for a field page

A page of wildflower studies needs air. Choose one hero plant, add a supporting leaf or two, and leave the rest of the paper alone. Thumbnail boxes drawn lightly in a corner will help you plan before you commit.

Vary the scale across the page: a whole plant, a close study of a single petal or seed head, a scatter of leaves. Put your subject slightly off-centre rather than dead in the middle — it leaves room for the drawing to breathe. Finish each page with a written note of the date, place, habitat and weather. That small discipline turns a page of sketches into something you will actually enjoy looking at in five years' time.

Fieldcraft and looking after the places we draw

Drawing wildflowers is a way of paying attention to them, and it should leave no trace at all.

• Never pick. Some species, bluebells among them, are protected, and even common flowers wilt within minutes of being cut.
• Stay on the path. Don't trample a verge to get closer — sit at the edge and draw what you can see.
• Keep gates, stiles and bridleways clear and step aside for walkers, horses and cyclists.
• Mind the sap. Members of the carrot family, hogweed especially, can cause painful blistering when sap meets skin and sunlight. Wash your hands afterwards and keep them away from your face.
• Sit down to work. A lower viewpoint gives you a truer sense of a flower's shape and is kinder to the ground beneath you.

Return to the same hedge or meadow every few weeks. One sketchbook, kept faithfully through a year, becomes a quiet natural history of a single patch of countryside — and a record of some very good walks.