Looking ahead at the solstice

 These are the books I showed you over in Field and Fen, and here's why.

The Winter Solstice today is the shortest day of the year, and as of tomorrow, the light starts to come back tiny bit by tiny bit.  So I think it's a good time to start looking forward hopefully.  And, if you're interested in learning something new, what better time to at least start thinking about it, than today.

These are four of my favorite books to show people and encourage them to do their own drawing, painting, observing, and making the means of preserving what they've made. 

The Practical Naturalist, an Audubon book, edited by Chris Packham, with contributions from a lot of interesting people.

Weaving Without a Loom, by Veronica Burninham, which has been printed with various different covers.  This is just the one I happen to have.

Handmade Books by Kathy Blake, which is a wonderful teaching book about a wide range of book types and binding and stitching, and very accessible to an interested beginner.

A Life in Hand by Hannah Hinchman, showing you how to go about using art in your journal, and how to lose your fear of doing it!

A journal doesn't have to go on forever unless you want it to.  I've made journals of drawings done every day for a month, then bound them into little booklets. Or you can do on entry on the first of each month.  Whatever suits you, it's your book.

The Practical Naturalist may go more into the study of nature than a casual person wants, but it's very good indeed on learning to observe and just enjoy for its own sake, when you go out walking.   You don't have to have wonderful surroundings in order to see interesting things and try drawing them. Whatever you come across is material.

Pro tip: get up your courage to draw out there in the open.  Your drawings, even though they may be a bit beginnerish at the beginning, why not, will have so much more life than if you take a photo and work from that at home.

It took me a while as a teenage kid to get brave and draw out of doors.  Then I found people were interested and the problem then was to try to work while being peppered with friendly questions, and stories about how their relatives draw out of doors, and so on!  But it's really okay as an experience.  People are uncritical, and just admire you for doing it. So there's that.

A Life In Hand is a great way into nature journaling, or just adding bits of drawing and painting to any journal you keep.  This is open to an important chapter: Finding Your Own Voice.  Vital stuff.  Whatever you do is fine, it's all about discovering your own talent and wants.

Then, why not create your own book to keep the work in?  You can draw and paint and later compose the pages into book form, or you can make a simple stitched blank book with paper you can paint and draw on, and bravely work straight into it.  A lot of people are a bit timid about this, and would rather make the book later, or cut out their images and glue them in.  Your choice.  Nothing's right or wrong here.

Then you might need a bag, see mine below, to carry your materials and your journal in, since you'll be wanting to do rapid impressions and sketching while you're out walking or observing, or just sitting on the sofa looking out at the bird feeder.

Veronica Burningham's Weaving without a Loom is one of my favorites for introducing people, including me, to the freeform approach to weaving.  You can weave great stuff using a piece of cardboard you've notched top and bottom.

And you can do weaving with sticks.  I've done this, and since my sticks are craftsman made and expensive, you need a cheap alternative.  I've taught kids to do stick weaving using drinking straws.  You can make lovely things this way.  The youngsters I've taught, ranging from 7 to 10, made bookmarks, and went home all prepared to do more weaving to make belts, guitar straps, headbands, you name it.

Card looms shown here, for making table mats, but anything you want to make, really.

And here's a bag I made using the  instructions you saw a couple of pix ago, from this book. The strap, which goes round the whole bag and works as a shoulder strap too, I made using my weaving sticks.  Note the nice decorative area in the middle, very simply done, but makes it so much more interesting.  I made this donkeys' years ago, and various beloved cats have got into it, playing and snagging the threads.  Cheap yarn, just what I had on hand.  Warp and weft from same yarn.

So maybe you'll be tempted to start thinking about this.  Today would be good.  And please leave your critic at home when you go out on a drawing expedition, which may be one block away. Or just outside your front door. She will try to put you off, and you just need to invite her to come back later, many years later, when you're ready.  Right now you're just pleasing yourself.

As a wise art teacher many years ago said to me: this work is better than you realize.  This will be true of you, too.

One of the things that my adult students used to be amazed about when we did critique, was the strengths I pointed out in their work. Everyone has them.  It's just a matter of letting yourself find your voice.  You don't need to show your work to anyone, except if you want to email me pix, that would be a treat, just to share, not to expect critique.  Don't look to anyone for praise, though, since this is your journey, not theirs.  Art is about coming face to face with yourself.  Like the archer aiming at the target, you're really aiming at you.

It's a lovely journey.

More painting

Painting kit ready. Always good to have it right there, so you can seize the impulse.

A couple more small works from this morning.

Alla prima watercolor

Ink and wash

 After being reintroduced to nature journaling the other day by a presentation of John Muir Laws on Zoom, I thought it would be an idea to do that again. Not like botanical illustration, but my own watercolor style.

What the camera saw, quite different from what I saw.

I took a workshop years ago, a daylong botanical illustration event, just as a personal challenge, since I don't work that way. Wonderful teacher. It felt several years long, but I emerged with this

The main part I did in class, spent five hours on it. The added life and movement around that solid flower, I added in a few minutes when the teacher wasn't looking. She would have disapproved!

I did a few more flower studies that summer, before deciding I needed to get back to my normal speed-of-light approach to drawing and painting.

 It was valuable to visit another way of working, like another planet, just for the experience. But there was no joy in it, no happy discoveries. For me, that is. So that was good to know.

Anyway I thought I'd do a continuing series of small paintings based on the patio. There's enough material there for a lifetime, and each time I approach it I can decide what to focus on and how.

 It will probably become an artist's book, more about the artist than the subject. This is usually true, no matter who the artist or what the subject.

The size, height precedes width in describing painting size, is 5 x 3 and 8 x 5 inches. Astute viewers will note these are the size of index cards. They're also golden rectangles, a great shape for an artist to work in. You can go bigger, following the Fibonacci series, adding as you go.

 If you aren't familiar with Fibonacci, the Other Leonardo, check him out. The universe is built on the Fibonacci series, well, the other way around. I'm thinking in these terms because of the comet, not visible to me, sigh, rain, clouds.

Using the golden ratio, the balance is already there before you even start work. This ratio, 1:1.6, feels natural to humans, since we're pretty much built on those lines.

So, one problem solved ahead of time. There are plenty more as you work, each stroke foreclosing on future choices, without getting too technical.

 But you can't do better than get a bunch of index cards if you fancy drawing a bit. They're your friends.

Debris after today's work

Good morning's work and experience. This afternoon it's stitching some straight side seams in my summer top.

It's all go. Art will save us all.