Reflections on a Creative Week

A whole week of creative play ✨

Last year, I took some time before Christmas off of work, to spend the whole week being creative (just for me - with no deadlines and client projects to work on). Some life things got in the way last year so it wasn’t as productive as I’d hoped (you can see what I got up to in this post) but I really enjoyed the concept - so I made it happen again this year.

I kept the whole of last week free, and spent every day at my desk with my paints, pens, pencils and sketchbooks. It was a wonderful week and I got so much done, discovered new things I enjoy and produced some work I’m really proud of. Here’s a recap of what I got up to:

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Still Flower Drawing Class - Gouache and Watercolour Pencils with Clare Therese Gray

I’ve been saving up classes from my Still subscription, so I had a folder full of them to work through during the week. They’re a great way of trying new things, finding new materials and techniques and experimenting creatively, with a bit of guidance from another creative.

The first class I chose was with Clare Therese Gray, using a mix of gouache paint and watercolour pencils. This one ended up being a bit of a warm up for me - as it was my first activity of the week it took me a while to really get in to it. I didn’t get my colours right and it wasn’t my best work, but the class itself was great and full of lots of great tips and ideas. While I didn’t love the work I created during the class, there were a couple of elements I really enjoyed, and took forward to the rest of the week:

• Using more water with the gouache paint, to get more colour variation.

• Being less precise with the detail lines, letting them be misaligned with the paint shapes underneath.

Still Flower Drawing Class - Graphite and Colour pencil with Claudia Lowry

This was the first of two classes from Claudia Lowry - and I absolutely loved both of these. I’ve been enjoying drawing Honesty pods and dried flowers lately, so that definitely helped as they featured in both of these classes.

My favourite takeaways from this class:

• Using a pencil at different angles and pressures to create a variety of marks.

• Adding small pops of an unexpected colour to add interest - like the bright olive green patches on the honesty seeds.

Still Flower Drawing Class - Water colour and pencil with Claudia Lowry

This was my favourite class of the week and things really started to click together here for me. I loved the colour palette that I used, and I incorporated all the things I’d enjoyed from the previous pieces - using more water, colour variation on the petals, misaligned line work.

The dried hydrangea painting is one of my favourite pieces from the whole week and I keep referring back to it for inspiration.

I followed up that class with a quick painting using a drawing from my sketchbook as inspiration. I wanted to see how the new techniques I’d tried would look with my normal colour palette and my own composition.

This piece felt full circle. The sketch came from the new inspiration sourcing technique that I’d tried the week before, so it really brought together all of the things I’ve been enjoying recently.

Still Flower Drawing Class - Oil pastel class with Molly Martin

Some of my favourite classes from Still are the original ones from a couple of years ago with Molly Martin. They start with some simple quick warm up drawings of vases and vessels, and then go through tips on with ink, charcoal or oil pastels. This one was oil pastels - not a material I usually use and not one I’m very confident with.

For the onion/melon drawing there was a real focus on looking at colours. We generally see something like an onion and think “that’s brown” but if you look closer, there’s a whole mix of colours in there. I pulled out a bright green, creams and dark browns and I love how these turned out. While I won’t be using oil pastels much in my work any time soon, I’ll definitely be remembering this tip about colours - especially when I’m painting leaves and foliage.

Still Flower Drawing Class - Oil pastels and gouache painting with Rachael Cocker

This class with Rachael Cocker started with a great warm-up exercise, filling a page with as many different marks as possible. I need to do exercises like this more often, especially if its been a while since I’ve used a material. I so often forget all the different ways I can use each material and revert back to my usual options.

There were some pretty quick timers for some of these pieces - especially the 2 flower stems shown above. This forced me to be less precious about neat lines and individual patterns, and instead I painted everything in bigger block shapes, adding the detail lines later with neocolors. I’d usually use coloured pencils for line work which works well for me, but having less control with the neocolors encouraged me to focus on more abstract markings and highlights. I probably wouldn’t use this technique for any “final” artwork, but its really useful for quick warm up and practice pieces.

Flower Drawing Session with Emma Carlisle on Patreon

I always love the drawing sessions on Emma Carlisle’s Patreon, so I was especially excited to find some flower themed ones that I’d missed over the last few years.

These were all quite short timed sessions of 3-10 minutes each, so I stuck with one colour and line work in my sketchbooks, focusing on mark making and continuous lines. This was a quick way to fill up 8 spreads in my sketchbook, and provided me with lots of quick sketches that I can take forward in to future designs.

Dried Flower Drawing Session with Emma Carlisle on Patreon

This was a really lovely session, and there lots more images from it that I need to go back and draw from. The references were scans of pressed/dried flowers which brought out all of the unique shapes, line and markings. In the allotted times for each image I started with a quick pencil sketch to get used to the shapes and marks, and then created the colour versions.

Again, I tried to use all of the things I’d learnt and enjoyed over the week:

• More water in the paint (although this is trickier in the sketchbook as the paper isn’t as strong so I had to adapt a little bit)

• Colour variation on petals and leaves

• Pops of unexpected colours (the brighter pink on the first flowers)

• Loose lines and marks

I have a huge selection of art supplies at this point, and I’ve been wanting to narrow down a selection to keep on my desk/in a pencil case so they’re easily reachable (I find I’m far more productive if there’s less barriers in the way to getting started), so throughout the week I’ve been taking note of which materials I’ve picked up the most. I gathered them all together and spent some time putting together palettes in my sketchbook.

I’ve now reorganised my materials so all my most used ones are the easiest to find, and I can refer back to this page whenever I’m stuck on ideas for colours.

I spent Thursday evening on the sofa with my sketchbook. I started off with a quick design using one of the florals from the previous session, adding in a patterned border and a few more details.

I then used my Roses reference book to fill up 4 more spreads with line drawings (using my most used pen). I enjoyed the way I used the pen to create the markings on the petals in the first one, so I continued the same style through the rest (still using the reference images for the shape and layout). These became inspiration for some paintings the next day, and I can see me going back to these again.

Odd Orange Flowers and Vases Drawing Session

I started Friday with the final online drawing class of the week - Flowers and Vases from Odd Orange. I skipped through some of the images that weren’t as floral (as flowers had been my focus for the week), and just did some quick line drawings for the rest to get me warmed up for the day.

I love the floral vases in these - I was doing things like this earlier in the year but I’ve forgotten about it recently and need to revisit the idea.

I knew I wanted to spend most of the last day on a set of paintings, bringing together everything form the week - the colour palettes, the sketches as references, the painting techniques etc.

I loved working on these, I worked well in to the evening, and I’m really proud of the outcomes. These feel very “me” and fit with what I’ve been trying to achieve for a while now - a style of working with colour that sits well with my line work pieces.

For one final creative activity for the week, I spent some of Saturday working in my sketchbook on more line drawings inspired by the roses book.

This whole week has been so inspiring (and honestly just a lot of fun). I’m so excited to keep working on these ideas in the new year and develop this style further - bringing the patterned borders and floral vases in to the designs too.

This has been a long post (thank you if you made it this far!) so I’ll leave it here, but I’ll be back before the end of the year with a summary of my favourite work from 2025!

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