A new place can be a fresh inspiration in art. It’s easier to see what’s really there and feel curious and interested in a scene which you’ve never seen before – there’ll be fewer existing assumptions or pre-conceived ideas about it. You can enjoy that child-like experience of exploring and discovering, and it’s also an opportunity to find out what you’re interested in, so that you can consciously pay more attention to that.
How to find out what interests you? Start by wandering, and absorb. Let yourself relax, let what’s there flood in without judgment. Be curious and playful and notice where you want to look more closely.
Wandering around the gardens at Belton, I found interesting contrasts and effects of light, patterns of foliage, shadows, different shapes, colours and strange things. The iron architecture of the conservatory gives structure to the green lushness and contrasts of the planting within. Windows give a frames work and let in light creating patterns on the walls and floor. It’s a sheltered indoor contained world of rare things, full of interest fro tiny details to how all the parts relate.
We will be playing with this process of drawing inspiration on the in-person drawing weekend I’m running in July. This year it’s located at Belton estate in Grantham, Lincolnshire. We’ll be based in the spacious and quiet venue of the old School in Belton village, and have access to the grounds and house of the estate.
Particpants in previous years have valued the time, space and supportive atmosphere of this yearly drawing event. It’s flexible so that your csan pursue your own interests throught eh weekend, but we will start together and you can get guideance on your develop through the weekend. There are opportunities to socialise as well.
To find out more, and register your interest, follow the link below.
It’s been a busy few months; I’ve run two drawing summer schools this year, of very different sorts, and met some diverse and interesting people in each setting. One was more informal, the other more structured, but both about developing confidence and allowing people to grow their belief in themselves and their own creativity. I feel so lucky to spend time with my students, and their questions and conversations really stimulate and inspire my own thinking about art.
For the third year running, in July I hosted a small group in the lovely surroundings of Pucks Oak Barn in Compton, Surrey. It’s a beautiful green space surrounded by a woolly and wild community orchard, buzzing with insects and all sorts of plants; the weather was kind enough to allow us outside on Sunday, where particpants collected also sorts of interesting things from sensations to seedpods.
The focus was on creating space for each participant’s own practice, whatever they might need at this point – and we had a diverse group with varying levels of experience and wishes for what each wanted from the time. With such a small group I could work with each person and give individual guidance, so each could follow their path – and we had quite different results from the weekend: small folded books made of drawings, a giant collaged painting, colour charts and collaged concertina books.
It was a very relaxed time with lots of permission and encouragement to do whatever one felt like doing, including rest and chat!
For the first time this year I participated in the Royal School of Needlework’s International Summer School, the first to feature an art class. It was also my first time taching this back on site at Hampton Court since March 2020. A week later that year the country was locked down; the last session of that course was delivered on Zoom, and was the pioneer for live online classes for the RSN.
The classroom was beautifully prepared by Noleen, Education Manager, and I was very ably assisted by RSN graduate Future Tutor Sonia Lee. We had an intense week with eight students, looking at drawing principles from the beginning with lots to learn and lots of experimental processes amongst the more traditional artistic principles and processes. People are often surprised to discover that there are learnable structures and principles behind art, it’s not a magic process which you can do or not.
There’s always a lot going on at Hampton Court in the summer, with costumed intpreters and re-enactors doing their stuff in the kitchens, walking about the palace and jousting in the grounds. RSN staff and students had a special trip to Buckingham Palace to see the Coronation exhibition and the robes and screen on which RSN staff and students had worked. It was in all a super busy week with lots to learn, lots of complicated travelling arrangements and much to see and digest.
For me what tied both quite different teaching experiences together was the goal of enabling confidence and excitement for the students. I aim always to give encouragement to see more clearly, to experiment and to play, and permission, to follow wherever curiosity might lead, and believe in one’s own inner creative voice.
My greatest reward is when someone says: ‘I realise I can just do whatever I want with my art and try things, it doesn’t matter’. When they say ‘I believe now I can draw’. When they say ‘I see new things I didn’t notice before’.
Do you have lots of UFOs lurking? PHds? Unfinished objects, projects half done… and does it matter? After a few terms of experimenting and trying lots of different processes, the students in my weekly drop in drawing class have a lot of work which may or may not be ‘finished’. I’ve written before about the process of reflection in creating artwork. Is this a case of reviewing the work, reflecting on what’s been done and then adjusting or adding to it til it’s complete?
Depends what you wanted to achieve. Sometimes when creating it’s about working out through the process what works, and equally importantly, discover what doesn’t work in order to change it – or discard the first attempt (or the second, or third…). The drawing/designing and making process is different to the mode you need to be in when you evaluate something; you need a bit of distance from your creation to see it objectively. Distance can be literally holding it at arms length, or it can be time. Put the work on the wall for a while and look at it now and then, or get it out of its folder or open the sketchbook and have a look through later, when a few days, weeks or years have passed. If you can introduce this discipline of periods of reflection, and then revisting your work, things might move forward in a way you don’t expect. If you’re the sort of person who likes a folder full of completd things this might be uncomfortable! It might mean making yourself stop before it’s finished and give some time for the image and your ideas to be assimilated and coalesce.
I have a piece of work currently sitting on an easel because I dont know what it needs next – but if I wait, and look at it ocasionally, that might become apparent. It’s been through a few of these hiatuses already. I have other work that I might just leave as it is, half done and not looking like a finished thing. It might get re-used in some way or ultimately binned (pulped and remade by the borough rubbish collection service), or burned. At the moment for me it feels important to let myself not worry about making finished things. I am just beginning to feel like finishing one or two. And others I might like to try that process again…
How do you know if it’s finished? Give your work a bit of love. Try putting some L-shaped pieces of mountboard around it and see how it looks, given the honour and care of a frame. The only difference between a drawing shoved in a folder and a piece of art on the walls of a gallery could be your attitude, and a carefully chosen frame. Remember to sign and date it. (You can make up the date if you’re not quite sure…)
Sower of the Systems, 1902. GF Watts.
Watts Gallery Trust.
Finished? There’s no reason to suppose Watts thought it was anything other than complete, but… imagine yourself in front of this painting, still wet with paint, brushes in hand. Would you have stopped here?
GF Watts took decades to work on some of his paintings. He would return to them and alter them over long periods of time. The (admittedly enormous) ‘Court of Death‘ was started in 1870 and finished in 1902.
Picasso made 58 versions of the painting Las Meninas by Valezquez, each one exploring different aspects of the picture. Each one is finished, but there was still more to explore.
Even when you think you’ve finished, it might only be one part of a bigger idea.
It’s a common experience: there’s something you love doing, but you struggle to find the time, or the motivation, and you can get discouraged and then feel disappointed. There are some ideas from study about how people change which might help.
I learned recently that to change things you need to be consistent in what you’re aiming for, flexible in how you get there, and persistent in your efforts. There will be lapses and changes of direction, but continual steps and trying different ways of doing things will keep you moving forward, however small your actions are.
Of course, learning a skill is going to involve changing a number of things in your life. You’ll need to review and make decisions about in how you spend your time, perhaps change your priorities a little to make room for your interests, and if the skill involves a physical element like learning a musical instrument or making something, spending time developing it will create changes how you use your body .
So what is it you want to learn? How do you make space for it, and encourage it? And how do you keep motivated after the initial burst of enthusiasm or effort?
I’ve been learning to play the harp over the last 18 months. I had a burst of enthusiasm when I acquired it, and was less busy at the time (April 2021) so I did lots of research, found different teachers and resources online, and spent time getting to know it. I found a place to keep my harp to hand, so that I could just pick it up and play whenever I had a few minutes. Although I’m enjoying playing it by myself and experimenting, I wanted to check I was getting the basics right – you can hurt yourself playing an instrument if you dont take care about how you’re doing the repetitive actions. I decided to go on a weekend course. It was amazing to be in a great big room full of harps, talk to the owners, and hear very different styles of playing. That really opened up my eyes to the potential of this instrument. I came away with renewed enthusiasm and curiosity, still mostly playing by myself but now looking for ways to connect with other harp players.
I’ve realised more and more since the pandemic just how important it is to mix energy with other people, in positive, fun, friendly and supportive environments. It’s very important to me in my work too, and why I like to teach groups. We’re usually learning drawing and aspects of art together; the ‘together’ bit is really important. In a recent class for the Royal School of Needlework, we had a wonderful difference of interests and experiences, not to mention different cultural knowledge as well.
At the end of these classes I try to persuade people to think realistically about how to carry on with their learning. Set realistic goals: choose two or three short times a week to practise, keep your materials to hand and then review what happened after a few weeks. Have some intention about what you’re practising, which means think about it occasionally and choose what to practise baed on what you are most interested in and want to develop. Be prepared to change the timing, frequency and circumstances of when you practise. Accept that in busy times you may have to reduce or let go of your practice temporarily, and that’s ok. Return and renew the commitment when the time allows. Just don’t stop. Keep taking little steps. Consistent, flexible, persistent.
I run a regular drawing class online each week, for just this sort of encouragement. Short courses in drawing are also available, directly through me or oriented towards stitchers via the Royal School of Needlework. Click here to find out more: https://carolinehomfray.co.uk/drawing/
It’s chilly out this morning. Across the river, the grass is a very pale blue-ish green with its coating of frost. The bare treetrunks are dark umber browns, with a surprising cast of purple around the haze of twigs at the ends of their branches. The deep browny purple is lifted by the golden ochre colour of the grasses nearby. Behind, the soft, indistinct masses of hedgerows and trees are the stubtlest hues of blues and purples.
I’m surveying my selection of coloured pencils, tuning in to find the ones which will enable me to create the right hues for the landscape I’m in, how they look to me at this point in the day, in these conditions of light and cold. This red-violet, this ochre, this turqouise blue… how will they work together? I’m absorbed, and even though I’ve seen this view many times a week over the last ten years, I haven’t seen this version of it before.
That’s one of the things drawing does for me; gives me a way to be present, to really look, and look again. It stops me assuming I know what things are, prevents me from getting stale and becoming bored by my surroundings – and how important has that been, since our lives have been circumscribed by the pandemic and kept close to home? What a gift, to have a way to see the familiar afresh.
It’s also a tactile process. I love to focus on the feel of soft, creamy pencils or paint sticks; the sudden burst of colour as water brings a solid paint block to life; the feel of a paint-loaded brush moving across the sandy texture of a heavy watercolour paper. Do I like how the paint sits on this paper, or that paper? Do I prefer the feel of this pencil, as it leaves a trace of pigment from the stroke I make, or that one? Finding materials which feel right is part of the process, grounding and comforting, connecting me with my own tastes in a small but crucial way.
Since March 2020 drawing has become a mainstay, and I am lucky to have been able to share it with my students. Real-life classes which I taught before the lockdowns became virtual, and instead of constricting my world, running them live online has enabled me to connect with others across the country and the world. I’ve had students from the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Spain, Brussels, Germany, and Russia join me and share their drawing journey together, many through the classes I teach at the Royal School of Needlework, and some from classes I run. I learn as much from students as they from me, and we have had moments of realisation, empowerment, joy, and laughter as we try things out, explore basic principles, find out what we like and don’t like, discover what we want to express, and how to encourage ourselves in the cradle of a supportive group.
I love to share what drawing gives to me, and to hear what it does for others, so I’m running another class for total beginners live online, starting on Janury 19th. It runs over three weeks on a Wednesday evening, via Zoom, and will be a small and supportive group. There will be plenty of opportunity to share and ask questions, but also no requirement to share if you don’t want to – after all, participants are at home and one of the benefits of that is that you can control your privacy. There wil be some suggestions of things to try between the sessions, and the chance to join one free Thursday evening or Monday morning drop-in session for free after the course, should you wish to. More information is available below on the learning page, and a link to book.
Caroline Homfray 