June 3rd, 2026

Keeping a Perpetual Journal

Dive into the practice of perpetual journaling with botanical illustrator and author Lara Call Gastinger.

By The Art Toolkit Team

An open sketchbook featuring botanical drawings, with watercolor palettes, brushes, and pens scattered around. A silver charm and a patterned napkin are also visible. — Photo of Lara’s art and supplies by Sarah Cramer Shields.

What Is a Perpetual Journal?

Developed in 2001 by Lara Call Gastinger, this original practice combines the skills of attention with documentation, intersecting both art and nature. It highlights the cyclical nature of time, and tracks the changes in seasons and the climate.

Perpetual journaling is a practice that hones your aesthetic sensibilities with attunement to detail and awareness of nature. Like an almanac, it calls for you to revisit the same page every year, a layering of memory and attention to create your own personal archive of uniquely observed details in the natural world that surrounds you. Through it, you’ll establish a visual garden that grows thicker with time (and possibly illustrations of thyme) and develop an artistic practice that stays with you through the passing seasons.

Daffodils in Mike Hendley’s perpetual journal.

A hand holds a paintbrush above a sketchbook page featuring watercolor illustrations of purple crocuses and a flower, along with handwritten notes about the plants and their location. — A March page in Christina Lovering’s perpetual journal.

How to Keep a Perpetual Journal

Lara recommends selecting a journal with a minimum of 60 pages to amply span 52 weeks in the year.

Begin by dating the pages. Label each two-page spread with the span of a week, beginning, for example, with January 1st–7th, until you have 52 weeks plotted out. When you open your journal, navigate to the current date and add an observation.

Grape hyacinth bulb from Andrea Paterson’s perpetual journal.

A detailed illustration featuring a Spotted Towhee, showcasing its distinct black and red plumage, alongside a honeybee and snowdrop flowers. Text notes the bird's sighting at the Riebel Bird Sanctuary in January 2024. — A Spotted Towhee from Andrea Paterson’s perpetual journal.

After a year passes, return to the start of the journal and add in the next year’s observations to the spread from the previous year.

Each weekly spread builds up slowly and incrementally over time. Some drawings can be simple, some can be detailed or in full color, and occasionally a week (or month) can be skipped if time does not allow. Dividing the journal into spreads representing one week is logical and reasonable and creates a forgiving and manageable drawing pace.

There is no need to wait for January 1st to begin; you can start entering sketches into your perpetual journal at any point during the year.

A beautifully illustrated nature journal page featuring detailed sketches of various botanical specimens, including flowers, leaves, and seeds. Notes and dates are handwritten alongside the drawings, capturing observations from the week of March 12 to 18. — March pages from Lara Gastinger’s perpetual journal. Lara’s book, *A Perpetual Journal Practice: Build a Connection with Nature Through Art*, will be published June 23rd, 2026 by Timber Press.

Recommended Supplies

Sketching Tools

A Copic Multiliner, Mini Aquash Water Brush, a fountain pen such as the Platinum Desk Pen. A Pentel Brush Pen is also a fantastic way to create varying line widths and textures seen in nature; combine it with Neocolor II Aquarelle Pastels as Robin Lee Carlson does in her workshop, Pollinators in Ink for colorful and intricate detail.

Paint Palette

Lara recommends a limited palette with primary colors: a warm and a cool yellow, a warm and a cool red, and a warm and a cool blue. Other colors Lara likes to include are Sepia, Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Quinacridone Gold, Neutral Tint, and Shadow Violet.

For a place to start, consider our paint-filled eight-color Demi Explore Palette or 12-color Explore Palette.

Paper

Lara suggests using a sketchbook of at least 60 pages to span all 52 weeks of the year. For light sketching and note-taking, the soft pages of a Midori MD Notebook invite reflection. For layered watercolor or ink sketching, we recommend Hahnemühle sketchbooks! Their 100% Cotton Watercolor Book is a hardcover book that includes 30 sheets (60 pages when you use both sides), perfect for mixed media and a sturdy companion through the seasons.

About Lara Gastinger

Lara Call Gastinger is a botanical artist and illustrator in Central Virginia. She was the chief illustrator for the Flora of Virginia Project and a two-time gold medalist at the Royal Horticultural Society Botanical Art Shows in London (2007, 2018). She is renowned for teaching how to create and maintain a perpetual journal. Her book, A Perpetual Journal Practice, which contains a more in-depth guide to the contents of this blog post, will be published by Timber Press on June 23rd, 2026.

A woman with short brown hair smiles while holding two books and a fern in a lush green garden setting. She is wearing a green blouse and appears relaxed and happy.

The subjects of Lara’s art come from the natural world and her art reveals detailed evidence of change, decay, and processes that occur in nature. She finds great inspiration in a carrot that has gone to flower, a broken seed pod, twisted roots or insect damage to a leaf. She strives to make a plant portrait in such a way that it reveals its character and uniqueness. Her focus is on the small details in nature, down to the small venations in leaves which hopefully inspires others to look a bit deeper and pause a bit longer.

Explore Perpetual Journaling

We invite you to read more about keeping a perpetual journal on Lara Call Gastinger’s website.

You can watch our Live Demo with Lara Gastinger from 2020, and check out workshops such as Garden Journaling with Bethan Burton to deepen your perpetual journaling practice and observation of the natural world around you.