A Trail Through Leaves: The Journal as a Path to Place

Author: Hannah Hinchman
List Price: $17.95
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ISBN: 0393318850
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (01 April, 1999)
Sales Rank: 79,642
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 1 out of 5
Overwrought
The author favors an elaborate, self-conscious type of writing. Put bluntly, her prose is frequently purple. The drawing and writing lack the spontaneity that would be expected in genuine journal excerpts. The overall artwork is quite poor--flat, tentative drawings and watercolor pieces with mushy brushwork that leave the images feeling overworked and without any sense of weight.

Rating: 1 out of 5
such potential....such bias
If you are a biologist or scientist who also does art, this book may be as offensive to you as it was to me. This person presents an approach to 'seeing' which she suggests is the only true way to see. She gives extensive examples of how blind biologists/scientists are to the world. Her pretention only uncovers her own ignorance. I had such high hopes for this book. I had hoped to improve my field sketching skills. The only information I got from this book was an updated list of supplies. No useful technique information. Quite a bit of quirky annoying dogma.

Rating: 5 out of 5
Beautiful and full of good ideas
Hinchman writes about her own experiences about journaling why she continues to write and draw in them. She breaks the book down into different parts of journaling at the end of each chapter she has a few pages of activities that you can use in your own journaling. But the book isn't preachy she talks about journaling from her point of view. What makes the book so beautiful is that it is filled with excerpts from her own journals over the years, both drawings and words. For me this book was especially good because it didn't tell you how to journal as if it was some set of instructions. Instead she, as in the title, led me down a trail.

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