Hello artist friend
I struggled for a while with making my art outdoors because I couldn't seem to make it ‘fit’ with my regular art practice and process. Can you relate?
I saw other artists going out
into nature and making sketches and studies, collaborating with the weather or the tides to create their work, or creating full paintings in oils with an easel and pochade box like Monet.
And none of that felt entirely like me.
I liked trying out the different ways to approach making art en plein air, but none of them really stuck or felt true for me, because they didn't tie in with what I usually do, and I couldn't seem to ‘make’ them!
I thought what I did in the studio and what I did outdoors should be linked.
And therein lay the problem!
It was a ‘should’ for me. It was also a desire, but it took me a while to do two essential things to separate them:
- Give myself permission to just not make art outdoors, or at least not in the way I saw ‘everyone else’ doing it.
- Find my OWN way{s} to do it.
And that meant letting go of the thought that when I make art outdoors it needs to relate in some obvious way to what I do in the studio.
Or that I had to do it in a sketchbook.
Or that I had to draw or paint what was in front of me.
Or that it had to be worthy of showing!
When you start to look more closely at your thought processes around sticky things, it can uncover a whole pile of nonsense! 😆
I don't make rules about what I'll make, whether it will be in a sketchbook or on loose paper, with materials from the landscape or a full kit, or whether I'll use it in the studio later. {I rarely do directly.}
If what I create sparks a new idea I can take into the studio, great!
If it's just a lovely peaceful experience of being outdoors, surrounded by natural sounds and fresh air, doing a blind contour drawing of my trainers in the grass {see image at the top of this email!}, then that's all it needs to be, and that's perfect.
Having spent several years playing in and with the natural world for my art, both indoors and out, and
learning how to place it so it serves my creative process and doesn't become a ‘should’, I bundled up everything I learned to share with you in my
immersive course, into Nature.
Together we go on a wide range of art adventures, from sketching, collage, painting, and creating with clay, to eco printing, land art, making pigments, and exploring different approaches to making art with - and in - nature.
You can play and explore, feel inspired and restored, all while discovering if and how making art outside works with the way you want to make your art.
There is something about this collaboration that is deeply well-filling, helping to reduce anxiety and bring inspiration even during dry creative spells.
I'm telling you all this because the course is going away soon! It's going to live inside the Happy Artist Studio {my artist membership}, and will no longer be available as a standalone course with lifetime access.
After June 20th it will only be available inside the Happy Artist Studio, and I really don't want you to miss out on this if it's something you've been wanting to try.
So if you want to get into nature and make art in it in a way that works for you and your unique process, click the button below!
Is it time to find YOUR way to make art with the natural world?
