✍️ Creative Limits Are Helpful + Let's Talk Scale

Hi Reader,

At halfway through the year I am finally feeling a bit productive (thank goodness). Energy in general ebbs and flows, and creative energies are no different. Sometimes the mind wants to be creative but the body says no. Sometimes it's the other way around. Getting the two in sync can be a challenge, but there are always moments when the waters calm and the currents start working together. Have you ever noticed this creative tidal pattern in yourself? Where are you creatively right now?

🐟 I'm in the creative Ebb-state (the waves look far away and the view is muddy)
🐡 I'm in the creative Flow-state (the waves are rolling in and I'm riding them!)
🐠 I'm in the creative Paddling-state (the waves are gentle and I'm dipping in)
🐙 My creative ocean is unlike any other and I have no clue where I am in it!

👉 Seek out limits

One useful thing to remember when we are creating (or trying to!) is that limitations are helpful. To continue the sea-analogy for just one more sentence, let's go find a boat!

When we stare out at a vista full of possibilities it can feel overwhelming, and in seeing everything we might end up seeing nothing. If we narrow our focus, we can process the landscape better and start making intentional decisions.

Creative limitations don't need to be big to have impact - they can be teeny tiny. Make a list of some you could try in your sketchbook. Here's a few to get you started:

🟡 Pick just one colour. Draw a page in your sketchbook using only this colour. You might decide to create with different materials (e.g. a purple crayon, a purple pen and a purple pencil) or perhaps use one material, such as watercolour, and adjust the opacity to explore tones and values.

🟢 Draw inside a box. Draw one box, or a few, on your page and then see what you can fit inside them. Having simple boundaries can focus our energies. Instead of having a pristine white page (which can sometimes feel scary to approach), boxes immediately break up the blankness and give you multiple spaces in which to play.

🟣 Remove the brushes. What else could you use to paint with? This is a great one for forcing experimentation. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. If brushes weren't a thing, what would you use instead? Your fingers? Some cardboard? Sticks? Leaves? It doesn't matter how the painting turns out - the process will get you thinking differently and subconsciously problem solving as you go.

It's a weird thing - that in thinking up ways to make art harder, we can make our creative energy flow freer!

Making Happy in... London

I don't visit London super often (because train fares are so pricey), but I look out for offers and every now and then I try to get to a gallery or museum, and have a general mooch about.

On my latest visit I popped into the National Portrait Gallery to see the Jenny Saville exhibition (if you're interested I'll pop a bit of info below this) and then went seeking things to sketch in my tiny gnome journal. I bought this book from Hoxton Monster Supplies and it's so cute. And it's actually another form of limitation which helps me feel creative - there is hardly any space...so it forces me to focus more.

This time I sat in St James Park, on a shady bench, and sketched this leaning tree. A bird that seemed like a tiny heron at one point flew into the high branches. I couldn't see it great, but I tried to add it onto a branch in my tree - I made it a bit big, but I still like it!

So from this tiny scale, let me tell you about some artworks which are BIIIIG!...

🎨 Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting

This exhibition brought together 45 works made throughout Jenny Saville's career, and it was truly striking to visit. From the zoomed-out photo below it might be hard to get a feeling for how large these portraits are, but when you are in the room, they feel like such a presence looming around you.

I loved being able to walk right up to the canvases and see the raw and ragged paint strokes - where colours are scraped or dripped and look like abstracts - and then step back into the centre of the room where the full portrait assembles into view.

I found myself staring into the softness of the eyes, marvelling at how they nestled inside such movement in the skin. Some portraits made me feel unsettled. Some portraits made me tilt my head to see them on their own terms. All of them intrigued me and I was glad to have spent time with them. If you have any interest in portraiture I'd recommend looking up Jenny Saville's work - and see how it makes YOU feel.

✨ Purple Garden Pyjamas! ✨

I mentioned in my last newsletter that I was going to re-paint an old Kermit garden sculpture...thank you for your colour-votes! In the end he came out purple!

See the process in this new video...

✨Let's refresh Kermie! ✨

Until the next time, Thank You for being here with me 💛

Keep Making Happy!