We are in the second week of November, and it always feels like after September comes December, the roller coaster of time goes so fast this last quarter. I have been nurturing my creativity, healing, imagining, walking daily, making art.
A lot of it in my sketchbooks.
And I have been thinking about some of the big questions and fears that come up around art making and creativity in general - what stops us creating, what mindsets and internal tools we need to become confident and compassionate creatives, and how to do all this slowly, gently, sustainably, in a world that is so fast paced and so focused on production line thinking.
I realised my sketchbook actually held some of those answers, and is a way to empower the rest.
The Wild Sketchbook Sanctuary is coming. Very soon.
Over four weeks we will dive deep into building a supportive, enchanting sketchbook habit, while getting curious about all the physical, emotional, and imaginal work that goes into being creative. Having a practice that allows you to learn, to play, and to make beautiful art in ways that your heart and mind feel safe helps to build your resilience, strength and groundedness.
One of the most valuable things an artist can do for themselves is to carve out space for the very tangible self care that creating for play and curiosity and development of ideas and just sheer joy provides. A sanctuary.
A sanctuary between the covers of a sketchbook.
I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but between you and me, I kind of think this course might be my life's work. I am feeling such a deep call to not just share this sketchbook (and philosophical) practice I am deepening, but to empower you to become the creative your wild-heart is yearning to be (and that the world needs right now). Making art should feel expansive and nourishing, and I think together we can make that happen.
More on this later in the week…
While my head and heart have been deep in sketchbooks and sanctuaries, I have eased back into sharing via Notes on Substack, and the Breathe In, Breathe Out practice that I started earlier in the year. I am aiming to share twice a day for all of November, and so far I have kept up! I know most of you open these missives through your email rather than on the Substack app or desktop, so I am sharing these Notes below. You can click on the Breathe In or Breathe Out to be taken to that Note (and see more). There are some really marvellous comments and replies to them from our community that I think you would love, so I have linked each note too, so you can pop over (and also see the images I have been sharing).
I would really like to know your answers to some of the questions I have posed - please comment where you feel called to, or reply to this email and let me know. There is so much about being in this wild world that is better for walking it together.
More on The Wild Sketchbook Sanctuary soon.
(I am a little bit very excited).
May your wild heart find joy today,
Wed 01 Nov 2023
The ravens at the watershed have fledged three inky black bundles of caws and raspy argggghhs. This new one is younger than the other two, and so is calling for food more than the other two, who are finding most of their snacks on their own now, it seems. All three have the dark eyes of young ravens here, stark in contrast to the bright ice blue of their parents, and one of my most favourite things about Australian ravens. This youngest one has the light pink lips of a babe, feed me, feed me. I talk softly to them, but they are wily and wary and stay well away from this odd human trying to befriend them.
I am working through, working with, some very big mental health challenges at the moment. This morning I took my first walk for nearly a fortnight - this is something I usually do pretty much every day, but the internal hurt and darkness have been heavy, and not something I felt I could carry for more than the length of my house. Today is a new month though, and there is a tiny flame inside my chest telling me I need to prioritise some different self care, that my cocooning can be gently transformed. So I am going to try hard to bring back my early morning walks and let the birds I greet on the way help shift some of the darkness. And with that I thought I would bring back the Breathe In, Breathe Out series for all of November. Breathe In - something I see on my walk, or in my morning, that I am grateful for experiencing. Breathe Out, something I thought about through the day, something from my work, some sort of magic in the mundane. A practice of gratitude, yes, but also a tethering to the physical world, a gentle release of my tight grip on fear and pain that pulls me further into the dark spiral. If you would like to join me with your own Breathe In, Breathe Out I would be overjoyed.
Today was full of big ideas and even bigger plans. I am feeling grateful for special humans who just get you, and who speak inspirational words without even realising. I am looking at you
. A short-eared owl finished falling out of my pencils, part of the Silent Flight book, and I pulled out my sketchbook again for the first time in a couple of weeks - the most special sort of self care.Thurs 02 Nov 2023
A different morning today, waiting with my mum at the hospital while my dad has surgery. Lots of expected big feelings and fear, but also gratitude that I live in a country where health care is affordable and good. A short walk through the park on hospital grounds, with an old cemetery (old for this colonised land), and wondering at the lives that ended in 1886, 1889, 1900, while magpies play and fight with noisy miners in huge twisty tree tops, shedding their winter skins
One of my most favourite part of making art is connecting to a little wild being that fell out of my pencils or paintbrushes. It is in seeing that face appear out of pigment scratched on paper, and the personality they project. An honouring of a beautiful being that now exists as it’s own entity of sorts - the birth of something that was not there before. The magic of creation. And it is magic. You’ll not convince me otherwise. What did you magically make today? What delicious food or enchanting words or wild weavings? Tell me, I want to know what magic was made around the world (in your tiny corner of it) today.
Fri 03 Nov 2023
There are babies everywhere. Indigo and ink fluff-balls on long legs follow the Swamphen, Moorhen and Coots. They are such kind and gentle parents The ducks have been baby-ing for a couple of months now, but there are new clutches appearing. The youngest raven was chattering away this morning, and the sky was the dapple grey of brumbies on the Kosciusko plains.
I read something beautiful this morning, I thought you might love too. “When we experience beauty, something in us knows this. Our sensible skin knows. Our breathing chest knows. Our eyes, taking in light, and radiating light outward with every gaze, know. We know that we are part and parcel of this grand exchange. We know we are family” Andreas Weber, Skincentric Ecology, in Kinship Vol.4
Our creativity is, of course, inherently linked to the health of our physical, emotional, and mental state. And yet, I, like many of you I suspect, have worked so well (good little cog - have a gold star!) in spaces and systems that have valued output, product and productivity above anything else, that as a full time creative now it is a constant process of unpicking that well woven weave to place value on self care as a foundation. I am being reminded that I am an organic being, with some very big health limitations and an ageing body and a hurt heart, not a machine, not a machine, and that does not always bring the comfort it philosophically should. Internal expectations and self worth can be tricky, can’t they. If this resonates with you, too, know I see you, I think you are incredible, and thank you for showing up in all your glorious humanity.
And since I don’t want to break the streak, here is another owl.
Sat 04 Nov 2023
The rolling thunder woke me this morning, late, for me. The morning, reluctant to pull down the blanket of night, was dark, and so I snuggled under my own coverings a little longer. The rain is gentle, the sky softly grumble-purring, like a big cat, and it is so quiet otherwise. Those grumble-purrs bring me comfort in my sadness. I always feel a little more alive on cool and rainy days - do you? Everything feels softer, the light, the sounds, the feel of the air on my skin, my own internal dialogue. I need softer right now. I think a lot of this world needs a lot of softer. May you embrace softness today. May softness embrace you.
I have a question for you.
The last couple of days I have started to gather thoughts and words around a project that first came to mind at the beginning of this year. I think it will be ready to share very soon. What holds you back in your creativity? What causes you to pause (if anything) before starting something new, even if you are also excited about it? I will go first - one word, four syllables. Can you guess it? Perfectionism. Your go.
Sun 05 Nov 2023
What are you finding wild beauty in today?
The ducks are happy today, lots of rain overnight and early this morning, and the front lawns in front of all the little boxes made out of ticky-tacky all but browned off last week are vivid green today. My galah are bedraggled, and appreciative of the seed. The figbird is calling and gobbling up the last of the mulberries that weren’t roasted or blown off the tree in this absurd weather - mid thirties one week, seventeen today (and much preferable to me). The weather is the atmospheric personification of the turmoil we are all feeling, embroiled in, on a global scale too, it seems. Certainly it is the chaos of my own internal weather. A large pot of potato and pumpkin soup is bubbling away in a soup pot I sometimes pretend is a cauldron. Dreams of a hearth in an old cottage in the dark of the forest heart, soup bubbling, bread baking, and pigment waiting to be splashed across canvas. I have all these things, except the forest, though they may not look like I imagine in my wild-heart. I am finding gratitude for them this morning, for the wild beauty of the rain, for the hard times that will lead to appreciating the good times more, for the music I have keeping me company, for the ideas that pour out of me even when anything else feels hard, and for you, here, with me.
When it comes to your creativity, if you feel fear, what does it usually relate to? Is it fear of getting started? Fear of making mistakes? Or something else? When I had newly come back to art, well probably for the first couple of years actually, I was afraid of “wasting” good supplies. Like they were somehow holier than the process of creating. I conquered that fear, but like the proverbial whack-a-game, others pop up. I would love to hear what fears come up for you.
Another day, another owl for ya :)
Mon 06 Nov 2023
What is your relationship to perfectionism?
Another cool morning for my walk, another conversation with the young ravens, some reassuring the swamphens that I value their fluffy ink-blots on legs as much as they do and would never get closer, and warning them on my way back of the black-shouldered kite I saw fluttering over the swamp further down. The little internal flame has kindled a little more, and I am deep in a project that feels so important to me right now, so the one foot in front of the other in the morning is following through to one foot in front of the other at my desk. One finger in front of the other? I think my mixed metaphors are broken today. I have been thinking a lot about perfectionism and how that shows up (constantly) for me. It is not a stray thread loosely woven into my tapestry, it seems to be part of the foundational warp, and it may well be the work of the rest of my life to carefully unpick and weave a new narrative. And yet there are aspects of perfectionism that I would not want to lose either.
(Well, I did post this earlier, when it was still morning, or rather I thought I did, but apparently not? Does anyone else have issues posting Notes with a picture on Android? Just me? Anyway, here it is again, though a Breathe Out is imminent too 😊)
I don’t know who else needs to hear this tonight, but hey you, you creative there - I see you, and you are freaking amazing. Thank you for bringing so much beauty into this wild world, especially when it feels hard. Every word you write, every stroke of pigment, every knitted yarn, every shaped clay, all of it, is making this tough time a little easier - for you, I hope, but certainly for the people that get to see your courage and curiosity and feel a little bit inspired to maybe try it themselves. I know as a creative things can feel very hard, the act of creating is a vulnerable one, but know you are seen, by one person or many, and what you do makes a bigger difference than you can know.
Time for a cup of tea and the pages of a book I think. Today was hard, but ultimately good, and I learned some things. I always think a day with learning is a good day.
Tue 07 Nov 2023
There are kookaburra cackling away in the background, and the cockie is finishing up his special sunflower seed offering. Sweet boy - he has my heart (and knows how to exploit it for more sunflower goodness). He is filthy dirty, so I know he has a nest close by. The sun on my skin this morning as I walked was such a balm - my fingers felt the cool of the morning (these cooler mornings will not last much longer), my eyes stung in the low sun, but my skin, oh, it felt like all my epidermis was turning sunflower like to catch all possible rays. Wearing black, my back was toasty warm on the return, absorbing the heat of that star so far away, all while seeing the fingernail moon in the early morning blue. Sometimes my mind finds it all but impossible to hold all these things at once. Feet walking on an Earth built from cosmos dust, a giant star bringing warmth and light, a rocky silver orb influencing my internal watery makeup just as she influences the great oceans. The profundity of it is immense, and full of perspective. For a moment anyway. May you find a minute or too to ponder your own existence and the enormity of being here at this exact moment of time. I am so glad you are here.
(and Happy Birthday to my brother today!)
Creating is an act of courage.
Thank you for sharing some of the fears you have around your creativity. They are so universal, and yet we can feel so (so) alone in them.
Lately I am all about the word (and action) curiosity.
I feel like it is the solution, hmm, maybe not the solution, but a good way to move through (around, with) so many things. Perfectionism. Fear. Anxiety. All of these are things I walk beside (and sometimes struggle with) daily. But when I get curious, when I ask myself questions instead of being led by the big overwhelm and scary, well, they seem to lose some of their power.
Fear is at the centre of so much. Don’t try to actively banish your creative fear. Don’t get mad at yourself, or berate yourself, or think (or say) that it is silly. Be curious. Ask questions about what is causing the fear, and why, and then be courageous and keep going anyway. Because we need your creativity so, so much.
How about a Golden Tamarin today? You are welcome ;)
I couldn't agree more with everything you wrote, Natalie! This is ALL wonderful!!! I am looking forward to the sketchbook and all it contains. Yay. Thank you. XO