It has been a while since I wrote in this blog, so I thought it’s about time to update everyone how it’s been going for the past months!
The winter arrived very early in November with -20C temperatures and stayed freezing throughout the winter, which is quite unusual these days because of the climate change. So in November and December I did lot of walks in close-by nature reserve, covered with thick fresh snow. I carried my watercolour box and folding chair with me and attempted to make sketches, although the watercolour inevitably froze and ended up as a sludge I pushed around on the page. It was fun nevertheless and I learned quite a lot during these walks, especially how to simplify what I saw. You cannot stay in one place for long, when you’re freezing your toes off 🙂
In December, January and February I signed up for online courses with St Ives School of Painting (one course each month) to improve my sketching and painting skills. I’m interested in contemporary landscape painting and the school offers affordable courses by seasoned practitioners on abstraction, mark-making and plein-air painting. I learned working with different medium by making simplified sketches in water-colour and later finishing them with acrylics and different mark-making tools (pencils, charcoal sticks, oil sticks etc). One course particularly focused on different mark-making with variety of tools such as string, credit card, sponges and even squeegees!
But my favourite course was by a landscape artist Andrew Barrowman, who expertly uses different mediums across his work and freed me from the idea a contemporary artist needs to specialise only on one technique. I like his signature oil paintings, of course, that he builds up stroke by stroke, but it’s his black and white charcoals that are truly mesmerising. I especially love how he depicts trees and captures their character with a lively stroke. After seeing Andrew’s work I started to pay more attention to single trees rather than trying to abstract them and this is definitely a path I’d like to explore more in future.
As the winter started to recede in March, the spring tiredness kicked in and I needed to clear my head and my living space. So I started to clean and plant and learn more about the eco design thanks to my green-minded overseas friend Vicki, who has been doing this for a while. I was fascinated by a graphic she shared and this led learning more about permaculture in general. This is something everyone can do even in limited space and the principles can also be applied to different areas in life – not to waste, think in harmony in nature, look for opportunities on edges and by designing circular systems.
This whole new path has been eye-opening and made me take a second look at my current set-up as well as think how to make it more self-sufficient, open and circular. Applying my existing skills as a designer also to other areas outside the digital space and opening up my current practise to generate more yield from different sources. Creating your own circular food growing system is a very straight-forward, common sense path towards self-sufficiency. Creating your own circular online ecosystem is another way to fund your goals with honest good content people truly need, want and love.
So, as the Spring truly started yesterday we have now arrived in more abundant time of the year and I hope these new seeds sown during the bare months start to yield soon.. Happy equinox to everyone!
Helen Ilus 