This is part one of a two part piece exploring just why I have created the Hedgerow Creative Journal (it is a tiny-bit-very-wonderful) and why a community focused on creative practice and living a wildly creative life feels so very meaningful. Part two to come next week!
In March of this year I released the first volume of the Hedgerow Creative Journal. Like most things I become passionate about and actually do, it came without any real planning, because it felt instantly one thousand percent correct and what had to happen right now. I always listen and do as I am told when the muses are that loud, so far they have not led me (too far) astray.
On the 1st of August the 6th edition will be released to my Hedgerow community. The Journal is a labour of love, and I am so very proud of her. She has evolved slightly with every edition as I both learn her rhythm, learn the new rhythm of Hedgerow now blooming from seeds sown earlier, and also grow more myself as an author, guide, and complicated human animal who is completely enchanted by the wild.
I thought it might be good to speak more about why I created the Journal, why I have pivoted from the tutorial focused format of most creative memberships, and why it is important to me to share what a wildly creative, connected, compassionate and curious life can look like - imperfect, real, seasonal, slow, intentional, and in community.
Sometimes I will circle around an idea for a while, like trying to find the right way to slip it into the little notch the idea and the execution of it share. Actually, the image of a usb connection just came to mind - try one way, it doesn’t fit, try the other, it doesn’t fit, go back to the original, and oh, it suddenly fits. I first thought about making a regular publication of some sort in the middle of last year, but after eleventy different thoughts, none of them felt ‘right’, and so I put the idea of a magazine in some shape and form away. In the middle of March it was clear that it was meant to be for Hedgerow, and the three threads that I had not long developed that would wend their way through what was released behind the Hedgerow Brambles. In deep neurospicy hyper-focus the journal was born, written, and released within 5 days. Imperfect, and actually incomplete, when I realised a little while later I wanted to include ways to celebrate the Equinox - so an addition was included. But she was here, and I honestly felt like I had found the right next steps along my path.
Most creative memberships, or certainly the art memberships I had modelled my own business after, rely on a regular content churn of tutorials. It mimics courses in a way, and often it feels like the line between the two is blurred. It was certainly the case for me. I created Hedgerow because I wanted to continue the community space and relationships after my large course, The Wild Sketchbook (now retired) was finished. But there was so much overlap between the two, even I couldn’t figure out what I wanted them to be on their own, and as a result I started to feel like neither was doing what I really wanted them to do, and that I was getting more and more disillusioned and burnt out in the process. Creating new courses didn’t help either, I think it only made it worse for me (though the classes are beautiful and real and made so many happy). Many years ago I had a Patreon for almost a year, and the same thing happened there - I could not find my own way and did not want to walk the same path as other creators in the same field. Yes, I can be a little persnickety that way - there is a definite rebellious streak amongst the greys. While I am an excellent problem solver for others, when it comes to my own heart and mind, sometimes the forest and the trees are one big jumble and I want to hug them all and then I end up getting nowhere. Except surrounded by more trees and forest, which is not a bad thing in real life, but in my mind gets rather … crowded.
Hedgerow was already becoming so much more organically - the women inside were helping to make this the sort of circle I was wanting to be in and check on and support and grow every day. And the tutorials were lovely, but it became obvious (after facing the actual watch time analytics) that they weren’t really being watched. Yet they were the thing taking up all my time.
Here is where I want to celebrate ALL who make tutorials for others to work from. They can be all consuming. There is so much work that goes into them even before pressing record on the camera, and then even more work in the post production. Yes, they get easier with time and process built in, but they consume a lot of hours, a lot of mental energy, and a lot of our own creativity. But, oh, they are such a beautiful tool for learning! I learned from tutorials, I learned from making tutorials - they are an important part of the process of becoming a creative, curious human - but that is it, they are only a part of the process, yet they were taking up the majority of my time. Time that I realised I wanted to be using to encourage my community to practice - to make the art only they can make, to engage with the wild world around them, to find wonder in the small and ordinary so that every day holds the sacred.
I knew I had created more tutorials than any one person could ever need. I had made everything that would support someone learning to make everything from highly detailed coloured pencil portraits, to learning to use graphite pencils for the first time. From sketching realistically from scratch, to painting detailed watercolour, acrylic, and oil paintings. If you had never made art before, I had a way to get you started. If you had been making art for a while and needed more inspiration I had the tutorials to get you making. Adding more and more was only both diluting the goodness in the library already, creating a culture of needing to keep up (or feeling left behind). But what I was interested in, and what I could see my community craving, was a way to go deeper, not wider. To be in relationship with the beings we were studying with our pencils - not to be extractive in using a photo once and moving on to the next wild being.
I realised the way I was working inside Hedgerow, and what I see many other beautiful art memberships doing, reflected the surface-level social-media trained modern-human part of us that is always wanting something new, and forgetting the five minutes ago. Consuming ravenously but feeling hollow. I will be honest, I am eternally grateful to be Gen X, to remember a time without the internet, without social media, and without the ability to consume a lifetime’s worth of inspiration and knowledge in the blink of an eye. Am I immune to it all? Absolutely not. But I would like to try being a part of the slowing down again. For myself as much as for my community. Yes, yes, yes.
And like the old hair product ad, it won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.
What my heart wants to create is a place to slow down, to move at a very human animal pace, to find wonder in the small and sacred, to find daily inspiration, to feel the very real feelings of an intelligent animal body that gets frustrated and fearful when creating and know that is normal and ok and to keep creating anyway. To make a space to gather and to learn about, to know, species and their worlds, whether they are in our own back yards or in lands far away. To understand how their interactions with humans historically have led to stories and myths and archetypes and so much learning that we have forgotten and desperately need to feel whole. To learn the stories of feminine divinities and their interaction with the wild world. To learn about the birds and beetles outside your window. To be in relationship with our own bodies, our wild world close by, the larger ecosystem of this beautiful planet we are a part of not apart from. No need to reach for stars, but instead to dig roots deep into the ground, to grow and flourish where planted, to feel wildly, creatively, alive.
And even with a beautiful community space, I could not do that with tutorials alone - even if I spoke about the beings and their world during the recording. Nor with the little mindset moments via powerpoint each month. However I proceeded, I knew it needed to be deeper, not wider - a tiny mantra I held as I was making. Hedgerow would become primarily a place of practice. Practicing creative skills, but also practicing connection to the wild - the wild inside our own hearts, and the wild we are so very lucky to share a planet with. A tutorial gives you a finished drawing of a bird; a practice you develop on your own (but with support) teaches you to see their nuance of form, their feathers, their wonder, the life they live…and maybe even gives you a way to embody them in a way that gives your life more meaning and magic.
Over the years I have written a lot about the mechanics of making, of creating, and the underlying processes of mindset and feelings. Growth in all ways is never linear - we circle back and around, we go off on tangents, we sometimes come to a screaming halt, have to reverse, and find a new way. Growth looks like rivers and branches and roots and mycelial networks and our own neurons. It does not look like a straight and nicely paved road with white lines and a clear view to the finish. Growth comes from showing up, from doing the work, from working through the hiccups and hurts and hugely satisfying moments. It comes from forming a relationship with your practice, with your process, with your chosen creative medium. And in my case, where it all revolves around wild beings and the natural world, with relationship to your own wild animal body, your sketchbook, the place you live, the wildlife that inspires and delights you.
I know that this is the intersection where I belong. Speaking to a practice, celebrating how deliciously wonderful it is to see everyone’s own creativity, to remind that it is never about the finished outcome, but about the doing. The practice, the practice, the relationship, the process, the practice. The wildly creative life, not segmented, but whole and holy and interwoven with all wild life. This is the intersection I belong in facilitating, because it is also the place I need to do my own learning, too.
I again came back to what once was, when times were marginally slower - being Gen X, oh, we loved our magazines. The really good ones would get dog-eared and written on and rolled up and brought with you everywhere for a month. Nostalgic, yes, but that is what I wanted for my community. Something that is digitally crafted, ok, but that can be printed off and held in hand - truly analog, taken to the garden, the park, the seaside, appointments that might otherwise suck. Something that could be delved into in moments, poured over for hours, put aside, picked back up, and always held wonder. Something to be excited about receiving each month.
So the Hedgerow Creative Journal was born in a great flood of hurry and inspiration and hyperfocus, and I fell in love. Each month grows into itself more, but it celebrates practice - be it five minutes stolen between responsibilities, or a languid daily affair. All of it is important, necessary, and freaking wonderful. It celebrates wonder - I dive deeper into specific wild beings, a female archetype or goddess, or the ways you can find wild relationship with the place you live. There are prompts for discovery, compositions to explore, yes, tutorials gathered for learning, but it is all about supporting an independent practice to make beauty with your hands. It shows you how that practice is possible, how making art is about attention, reciprocity, reverence, and relationship. How creativity is not decoration or achievement or performance, but about being present and your own beautiful self. And about belonging - oh, yes, belonging to a community of women, and belonging to the wild you were always woven with.
Again, this is getting long, so I will come back with a second part that goes deeper into the journal itself, and why I think it might be the thing missing from your creative life if you think along the same lines as me (and let’s face it, if you are reading this, I think we would have some wonderful fireside conversations about the wonder of the wild). By the time part II comes out next week a new Journal will have arrived - and August claims the title Untamed. She is about the Okapi, the Common Kestrel, and the Wild Within.
And hey, if the Hedgerow Creative Journal sounds like something you might like, come and join us this week and be inside when the new Journal drops (eep! exciting!)
From this big wild heart of mine,
