sketchbook sanctuary : reflecting on 31 days of art
- Jennifer Schuler
- Nov 9, 2023
- 10 min read
Can you believe it's already November....what a humble month of the year. I find November feels like an in-between month for me. Halloween is over, Canadian Thanksgiving has passed, but its not quiet the Christmas season yet. The weather is changing, its starting to get colder, yet the autumn colours are still on display, we can still leave the house without mitts or a hat. My kids are settled in their routines with school, homework and activities. Depending on your work, the end of year rush is in full swing.
As I am still figuring out my groove here I thought I would use today's post to celebrate some wins from the month of October.
The first thing I want to celebrate is the OVERWHELMING positive responses I received with the launch of this blog! The number of personal messages, comments and face-to face feedback I received was something I could not have expected. THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for reading and sharing your kind words with me!
sketchbook sanctuary
So now let’s dive in with what has been going on here in my studio, home & life. The 31 art day challenge that I gave myself was yet again another success! I really discovered some fascinating revelations. To be honest, the initial few days where my most productive. I think because I announced I would embark on the challenge to draw in my sketchbook for 31 consecutive days here on my blog I kind of got obsessed with the project. The first few days I would draw everyday for a few hours... then life happened.... and my time was limited. Yet I still showed up everyday to draw! The interesting thing I discovered was even if on some days it was only for 10 minutes and others an hour or more, it felt like I was AWAYS drawing. The challenge that I was faced with one day in my drawing, became the motivation for the next days “thing” to work on. The process that sent me in hyper focus mode and made it so that I forgot to drink, eat or look at the time and then rush out the door at the last minute to pick up the kids from school made me hungry to revisit the next day while everyone slept at 4:45 am with a steaming cup of coffee. This 31 day art challenge made it so that I was continuously throughout my day revisiting my drawings (looking and making), researching techniques and studying other artists. It fueled my creative energy exponentially.
We all have seasons in our lives when things are slower and others busier. For me this month felt like some days where whizzing by; my kids are doing well, but are young and still need a lot of my attention and care (big emotions, homework, nightmares, help combing their hair or even zipping up that tricky jacket). I heard "Mama?!" maaaaany times this month. My husband had surgery due to a deviated septum and was off work for almost two weeks. We had major home renovation scheduled. I had a commission to complete, prepared work for two group shows, taught my (lovely!!!) weekly class, and of course then there was all the regular house, family & friends’ stuff! WHEW it was A LOT for me!
One day I shared on Instagram that my sketchbook has been a place for me during this busy time to retreat too. My friend Tara reworded my caption as "sketchbook sanctuary" and I immediately loved this new phrase! It stuck with me for the rest of the month; when life was hectic, my sketchbook was my heaven. My place to revisit, day in and day out, somewhere to find some solitude and something to focus on. I was so thankful for my art challenge during this busy season.
intentional struggles
As it officially was spooky season my sketchbook quickly filled with images of pumpkins, ghosts, skulls and trick or treaters. I am working towards my children’s book illustration portfolio so this month was the perfect time to practice drawing children dressed up as future character studies. I haven’t pushed figures much in my sketchbook and am still figuring out how to capture children the best way.
One thing I struggle with is line work. I HATE overplanning a work, making line work and then colouring it in. This process done in this order kills my creativity and, in the end, I struggle with completing pieces all together. So, this month I tried something new! I thought what if the figure is blocked out first with simple shapes, essentially creating a silhouette and then I re-work the line work in afterwards. Creating the details like the costumes, features and loot bags as I go along, instead of planning them a-head of time! Figuring this out was groundbreaking for me. It made me think about how I continuously need to set up parts of my practice that are difficult or hard to control as challenges or work arounds.
Music legend Jack White describes this as a tool to feed his creativity in his documentary “Under Great White Northern Lights”.
“On stage I’m using the same guitars that I used 10 years ago. I like to do things to make it really hard on myself, for example if I drop a pick, to go get another pick I have to go all the way back to the back of the stage to get another one, I don’t have picks all taped up to my microphone stand. I put the organ just far away enough that I have to leap to get to it to play different parts of the song. Its not handy to jump to the one thing to the next. I always try to push it a little bit farther away so I have to work harder and get somewhere. All that stuff and there are hundreds of those things like that. […] I am constantly fighting all these tiny little things; all these things build tension. […] its important to all that kind of stuff, if everything is all preplanned, and everyone sets out everything out for you, and the table is all set nice and perfect nothing is going to happen […] all these things force us to create.”
I watched this documentary years ago and I can relate to it so much more and more these past few years. Click here for the clip
haunted house
While on the theme of Halloween, this month I created an illustration, that I shared on my website as a free downloadable activity sheet for kids. The concept is a Haunted House, that kids can fill in and add all the spooky details that they can image and come up with on their own. Note this is NOT a colouring page, I wanted to make something that was open and let the kids be in control of. This idea came to me when my sister shared with me that my nephew ran out of time at the end of a day while working on a Halloween drawing. My 5 year old nephew is so creative, and I thought, why not give him a little treat, something digital I can send my sister quickly, that she could print for him to fill out and draw. He loved it! And so did my own kids! So, I put on my big girl pants and decided to share it with a bunch of friends and parents I know. It was the first time I did this, I felt vulnerable but I was ready! Again, I was blown away with how sweet everyone was and how much they loved my work. Our kindergarten teacher found about it from another parent (because I was too shy to promote it myself) and she printed them for the class! My sister-in-law who is a principal at another school shared it with her staff, and my friend in the UK shared it with her daughter’s nursery school teachers! I was so happy I made something that the kids responded so well to and that provided my friends and parents an easy no fuss after school, or Saturday morning Halloween activity. Win Win Win!
plein air drawing
Where I live, I am fortunate to experience the absolutely magical performative display mother nature puts on to prepare for winter; the changing of the autumn leaves. Every single year she takes our breath away with the stunning ranges of yellow, gold, rich deep oranges and burning reds. My phone camera roll gradually fills with endless pictures of random trees & bushes I see daily showing off their incredible palette. Thus, while I was working on my course plan this summer, I knew I wanted to bring my participants to draw outside and take FULL advantage of the season!
En plein air, a French phrase meaning "in the open air," describes the process of painting a landscape outdoors, though the phrase has also been applied to the resulting works. […] In the nineteenth century, through the cumulative efforts of artists such as John Constable, Camille Corot, and Claude Monet, painting en plein air came to stand for the ethos of modernity and fidelity to nature which it still implies. (www.theartstory.org/definition/en-plein-air/)
En plain air painting or drawing, now often simply called “plein air drawing” or “plein air painting” truly is a humbling experience. The connection to nature we are immediately faced with can even some ways be overwhelming. The combination of drawing from observation while facing elements such as the smells in the woods, the feeling of the air, the temperature, moisture levels, type of terrain makes it a bodily experience. For me no other practice forces me to be so aware of my surroundings and myself within it. While sitting down to draw in nature the sheer number of visual information makes it so that I have to dial up my focus on observation. Sitting and just looking plays an important role and often takes up more time than the actual drawing sessions.
When I took my class out to draw together, I gave some guidelines to what to pack; comfortable shoes, dress for the weather, bring a snack & thermos if its cold, a picnic blanket, portable chair or stool and of course our art supplies. But how do we decide what materials to bring? Having taken a course with the Goodship Illustration and following Helen, Katie and Tania on Instagram since 2020 I have learned the most valuable lesson from them; keep it simple!
If you are keen to set out and draw, outside bring only a few things so that you can minimize the feeling of being overwhelmed with choices. Take your 2-3 favorite tools in a few colours, one or two sketchbooks (cheap and heavy if you work wet) and that’s it! I guarantee this is a valuable tip. Helen from goodship has even started a movement on Instagram called #walktosee, where she encourages us all to go out and draw in nature no matter our skill level or access to materials. Cheap paper on a clip board and a few supplies are all you need. She often talks about how keeping it simple in this type of drawing can impact your practice.
My participants and I truly had a wonderful time together that October morning drawing at one of our nearby nature parks. I encourage anyone to try a plein air drawing session just for the fun of it and see where it takes you!
books
This past month I had good intensions to read a few books (I have no idea when) and took out several intriguing titles from my library. I always loan a variety of books such as: picture books, graphic novels, cook books, one or two fiction books, a theory or nonfiction book, and coffee table photo books for reference images. Here are some I have or am still working through.
Trick or Treat is the first book both to examine the origins and history of Halloween and to explore in depth its current global popularity. Festivals like the Celtic Samhain and Catholic All Souls’ Day have blended to produce the modern Halloween, which has been reborn with new customs in America—but there are also related but independent holidays, especially Mexico’s Day of the Dead. Lisa Morton lifts the cobwebs off everything from the explosion in popularity of haunted attractions to the impact of events like the global economic recession, as well as the effect Halloween has had on popular culture through literary works, films, and television series.
When we talk about being cozy, most of us think of a favorite sweater or a steaming cup of tea on a rainy day. But to Isabel Gillies, coziness goes beyond mere objects. To be truly cozy, she argues, means learning to identify the innermost truth of yourself and carrying it into the world, no matter your environment.
Starting when she was young, Gillies has gradually learned the art and subtle beauty of creating a life where you feel safe, steadied, and at home in the world. From old family recipes and subway rides to jury duty and hospital stays, in Cozy Gillies shows readers that true ease stems not with throw pillows and a candle, but from opportunities to feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, and learn to make ourselves at home no matter where we are.
"Winter on the Farm" is the ultimate guide to cooking healthy and hearty winter food, and will inspire you to eat well during the colder, winter months. Key points over 85 delicious, hearty and accessible recipes; tried and tested recipes, including how to make your own stocks, slaw and pastry.
An insightful, provocative, and witty exploration of the relationship between motherhood and art—for anyone who is a mother, wants to be, or has ever had one.
What does a great artist who is also a mother look like? What does it mean to create, not in “a room of one’s own,” but in a domestic space? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge.
what's up next?
So, in this in-between month, what do I aim to focus on, what intensions do I have for the coming weeks?
I have a few ideas for the next few weeks but also at the same time being very aware of my limitations and taking care of myself now that some of the busier days are behind me. I want to resume a regular workout schedule. Take better care of myself and rest. I want to limit my holiday prep work to make it a joyful season instead of a stressful one.
I am still so inspired by last month that I am craving longer periods at my desk and will aim every week to set a full day or two aside just to draw, paint and collage! I am brainstorming some ideas for another printable pdf for kids including yet another house image. On Instagram I am considering taking part in folktale week: a art prompt week inspired by folktales. Cant wait to share all of these ideas with you in a few weeks!
Thank you again for being here ! Wishing you all a creative day & happy November!
Love the sketchbook sanctuary and reading about how this 31 day challenge lit you up!
Such a lovely read!
Thank you Jen for sharing these parts of you and inspiring me.
It’s soooo inspiring to be around you,lots of positivity and a creative outlook,even for the month of November!!
thanks,
Francine