January Round-up

Discover the best of January in The Creative Flock + studio highlights

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January: A month of slow & steady creativity

Learning from past experiences, this year I’m emerging from my winter cocoon with more care and attention. Instead of starting any new big projects, I focused on reflection and planning for the months to come (check out Welcome to January post to see what my intentions were for the month).

Not to say I haven’t been creative or active here on Substack. Behind the scenes, I’ve been sketching outdoors, collecting small treasures from nature, and taking macro photos with my new phone camera lens.

Clockwise: Detail of ice forms, moss, tree bark and teasel

We used similar, albeit stock, photos in the ‘Nature in Detail’ session last January. I loved focusing on patterns, simple forms and textures in that session, and worrying less about creating representational drawings. It was cathartic and enabled me to switch off the part of my brain that overthinks things. It’s a process I would like to make a regular part of my practice, and I plan to host another Nature in Detail session using my photos. I’ll keep you updated!

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Notes that have struck a cord…

Both these notes resonated this month, along with Emily’s reply to my comment -

Yes, I find January can be a harsh teacher if we work against her rhythm!

In the Creative Flock Membership:

I co-hosted a delightful session with

Helen C Stark

based on The Art of Noticing, which aligned perfectly with my slow and steady approach for the month.

It was a lovely, relaxed evening, filled with varied and interesting conversations about the art of noticing and how the environment and weather can affect creativity. We also discussed bigger questions about our sense of belonging and shared the items we had noticed and collected throughout the month. It was a thoughtful and enriching experience, and I truly enjoyed it. Thank you to everyone who made the live and to Helen and inviting me to guest host! 😊 If you catch up on the replay and would like to share your work, please use this chat thread.

In preparation for the session, when the weather permitted, I ventured out with binoculars, an A6 sketchbook, and a small foraging kit (nothing fancy, just some repurposed food containers and a plastic bag 😆). During my walks, I took extra time to observe the natural world around me and collected small treasures I discovered along the way.

L-R: Bark from a copper beech tree, seed pod, piece of dead wood

I created a new mini concertina sketchbook to use during the session and since then I’ve been filling it with all the things I’ve noticed in January.

Some of the artists who joined, kindly allowed me to share their work here.

MICHELE

:

Charlotte Hamilton

:

Sign up for the Creative Flock membership to join us at our next live drawing session:

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As well as the live session, I wrote a post for my paid members, sharing the importance of making time for reflection in your creative practice and some key questions to ask of your art:

Getting up close and personal with my garden visitors!

Back in December, I tasked myself with adding some extra feeders to the garden and a variety of food types, to help my garden birds through the leaner, winter months. It was a huge success and more birds than ever have visited my garden.

I was able to watch the birds through binoculars from my studio but they were too far away to get anything than a blurry photo on my phone. So I set up my wildlife camera near the water dish and I got some lovely footage of a wood pigeon, dunnock and this gorgeous blackbird having a drink and taking a dip.

To capture the activity going on at the nut feeder, I shimmied up my wonky stepladder and attached the camera to the tree. I was very excited to get footage of a pair of blue tits!

Continuing with the bird theme, I took part in the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch, a UK-based, citizen science project.

It was a quiet hour, and I only recorded pigeons and blackbirds, but, any time spent quietly observing the birds from my studio is always appreciated. Did I mention I had come prepared with tea & biscuits? It was bliss! 😂

Co-Sketching sessions

We had two more co-sketching sessions this month, thank you to those who came along!

I wouldn't have created these drawings had I not blocked out that time, that’s what’s so good about co-working, it holds you accountable. Thank you to Emma Carlisle for introducing me to these!

There’ll be two more free co-sketching sessions in February, available to all subscribers and I’ll share details in my Welcome to February post, which is coming next. Subscribe to stay updated.

Small Drawing Challenge

I shared this challenge with all subscribers during January, for anyone who needed a micro challenge to get themselves back into a creative habit after the holiday hiatus. If you did the challenge, even for a week, I’d love to know!

Nature highlights from my neck of the woods…

As I’ve been intentionally seeking them out, I’ve enjoyed more moments of connection with nature this month.

L-R: Catkins on an alder tree, Leaf after a frost, entrance to a cosy animal den.

Beautiful late afternoon light by a waterway. Reeds, grasses and teasels were swaying in the wind.

Signs of spring: snowdrops in the church yard and vibernum coming into flower

When I’m not drawing or bird spotting i’m…

Rather than my usual rundown of books TV and comedy podcasts I’ve been enjoying, I wanted to share the ways I’ve changed my news and social media consumption over the past couple of months in response to tumultuous global events and political changes.

The world feels particularly crazy as we start the new year, and there’s a hell of a lot of misinformation out there (and likely to get worse with the tech bros running the show) but I’m doing my best to avoid the doomscroll + dispair cycle. It’s easy to fall into this trap and end up feeling so overwhelmed by the state of the world that we go into a sort of paralysis.

To help combat this, I’m actively avoiding social media to get my dose of world news, and instead going to more trusted sources that share facts over opinion (for example, AP News and Reuters. Not perfect, but better than most news outlets). I’m fact-checking more regularly (through UK sites such as fullfact.org and on UK Fact Check Politics - sadly only on IG though, no separate website)

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I’m also doing more to seek out positive ways to help causes and charities that are close to my heart. I recently became a paid member of two more wildlife charities (RSPB and Wildlife Trusts) and their magazines and emails are a great source of news, information and the positive ways we can help our wildlife.

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I’ve been an email subscriber of Positive News for some time and my lovely brother gifted me a year’s magazine subscription one Christmas. It was a joy to receive this through the post every quarter. If I’m in a particularly bad place and feel despair, I will often head over to PN website or IG account, to see what’s been going right in the world, which brings me hope!

positivenewsuk

A post shared by @positivenewsuk

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These are some podcasts which have been very helpful when it comes to understanding world events and politics:

The Rest is Politics

Pod Save the UK

Do you have any recommendations for good news story sites, podcasts or positive action groups? Please feel free to share in the comments.

I hope you enjoyed this round-up! I’ll be announcing the theme for February in my next post.

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