Drawn to the Wild

Calm. Creative. Focused. Growing connection and compassion.

Dear ones,

🌟 Happy New Day! 🌟

Ahem. Yes, it is a new year, but the feeling of year-shift for me started at the beginning of December, as I began making the lessons for The Wild Sketchbook, so I feel like I have been in a new year for a moment. We can (and should) celebrate each New Day too though, right?

I feel renewed, connected to my creativity in a new way, humbled to share, inspired to learn with and from (the participants and the wild world), and so much more clear about many, many things. Will it be a transient clarity? I am not sure, but I am revelling in it none-the-less.

I met a new species of bird the other day.

I had assumed it was an eastern wattlebird (and I did not have my glasses on), but was surprised by the noise it made, high up in the tuckeroo and cheese-trees on my walk. My brother, the sleuth, asked if it could have been an olive-backed oriole, and indeed, after listening to their song on YouTube, that is my new friend (though it was a female or juvenile that I saw, no red beak and eyes).

I don’t recall having known about them before. That could be just because we can’t know what we don’t know, or it could be that they are moving into the neighbourhood now - like the koel it seems they are more widely distributed north of here. More and more this area is moving from temperate to tropical, and so the creatures change too.

I am very glad to have met them though, and have quietly tucked their name into the little box in my brain attic where I treasure all the birds that live close by me.

This morning I discovered the owner of a strange honking noise I have heard in my morning  wanders too, and was astonished to see it come from an ibis! I have never heard them make that noise before (though I am sure many in the cities will have, where they fulfil their ubiquitous bin-chicken role). I relished that tiny bit of new knowledge.

I always said that a day that you learn something is a good day, but lately, particularly when the new knowledge is about a wild being, I feel so awestruck and wondrous, and I don’t want that feeling to ever dissipate.  You know that I have always been drawn to the wild, but it feels more important to me now than ever.

It also feels so lovely to have that kernel of joy in my chest again. 

I have just realised I used the word feel like eight times in the above. Do you get the sense I am in a feeling state? Or, of course we are always in a feeling state, perhaps I mean engaged state with feelings.

Needing to embody it all.

Feeling. Feelings.

I have a feeling, or feelings, that I want to have for this year. Feelings, rather than words. I want to embody these words, and grow my compassion - for myself, and for others.

Calm, creative, focused.

I haven’t done resolutions for a long while, as they only serve to disappoint when I don’t follow them through, but I can work towards feelings that I know that, well, feel good.

My goal for my business, and life, has always been simple - to do what I love and not feel afraid, and to go to bed each night tired from a good day's work, but deliciously fulfilled. Content, and with joy. Calm. Creative. Focused.

Here’s the thing. It is happening. Slowly. We are three days into the (official) new year, but I have been in new year mode for a couple of weeks, and I am feeling more calm, creative, and focused. I want to trust my intuition more, and I am. I want to make do with what I have, and I am. I want to build even stronger relationships with the wild (and my wild body) and I am. I am applying those feelings to everything, and it feels good - good to let go of shoulds and rules others set but that I took on as my own.

There is a lot of feeling that goes into my drawings and paintings, and working in sketchbooks again has amplified that too.

I create so that I can tell my subject I see you. I create so that I can embody the beauty and grace and wisdom of that being, to shapeshift in a tiny way as I take them inside me through deep observation and a hand that lovingly renders them in two dimensions. To become raven, or owl, or fox, or wolf in just the smallest way.

I see you.

I am drawn to the wild, I am drawn to drawing the wild. I am drawn to witnessing them as a way of witnessing myself, accepting and appreciating the animal body I walk around in, being humbled by their presence (while my own mind is often anywhere but in the present moment).

What feelings are you embodying?

What wild being can you learn more from?

Every day is the beginning of a new year. I hope your new year each day brings you deep connection to the wild, and your wild heart, and untold moments of the sweetest joy via glimpsed unexpected wonders. 

Big love to you.

Speaking of being drawn to the wild, I have something new to share with you.

My first ever course, released in 2019, was called Drawn to Faerie, and I love that the muses offered me this name back then, and regifted it to me just last week, when I had an idea I couldn’t let go of.

I wanted to fill a small-ish sketchbook in a year.

One animal or bird per page. In one coloured pencil per page.

And so, Drawn to Wild was birthed, and I would love for you to join me.

Calm. Creative. Focused.
That is what this little project is.
52 pages, 52 weeks, 52 wild beings.

You get one lesson a week, and by the end of the year, with reverence and reciprocity and calm, creative focus, we will have filled our sketchbooks together.

Time passes anyway, and the only wasted time is the time wishing we had more time.

If you can find an hour a week, I will guide you through creating a gorgeous body of work just for you, or for you to share.

Watch a bit more about it below. Click the button to read about it all and join the growing community of those of us Drawn to Wild.