June: Rest, gentleness and the creative cycle
Hi Everyone!
Thanks so much for reading, it’s so nice to see you here. It’s been so warm here lately and I’ve been so enjoying drawing outside and enjoying the sunshine.
It’s a whole year since I started writing this blog and I’ve really come to look forward to it at the end of each month. At the end of May, by a bit of an accident, I skipped a month and I really missed the feeling of checking in and recording some of the things that have been happening and some of the thoughts that have been making their way around my brain. I got my dates confused and the last Sunday of the month sailed past without me noticing. It was only when it got to the first of June that I realised. For a couple of days I felt as though I should keep up, I should keep myself to account and I exchanged some really quite cross words with myself - it was then that I decided that I would let myself off the hook and skip a month.
It was only when I did this that I started to think about gentleness, rest and creativity and how it might all link together. In my experience, I am not a good rester. I like to be productive. I like to get things done. I love a good to do list and I love crossing things off the list even more. However, when we finished our dissertations that we had been writing as part of the MA in Children’s Book Illustration, I found myself in the midst of one of the biggest creative blocks that I think I’ve felt in a long while. For context, this summer we focus on our Masters Stage projects that finish in December, and although it felt like all of the ideas had left my brain with the end of my dissertation, my body was still in a ‘must tick things off the to do list and be ready for the autumn semester’ cycle.
Everyone I spoke to talked about having a rest, but I felt so worried about having a plan, being productive and getting things done, that I concentrated instead on making schedules and plans and so, so many lists. I actually want to be kind to this part of myself, it’s this part that helps me to do the things I love to do, but what I didn’t realise was that in order for the to-do list loving part of my brain to function most effectively, it needed to be let off the hook. And in an ironic, round about way, this letting off the hook-ness started with accidentally missing the last Sunday of the month, last month.
It was missing this un-official deadline that started to make me wonder about resting, what it was, how to actually do it (harder than I thought), and what happens once you let yourself lean into it. I want to preface this with the fact that I am not an expert, and I am writing this as a reminder to myself, aside from anything else. I just wanted a way of documenting what it felt like when I started to rest and stopped getting cross with myself for feeling a bit stuck.
I think the most powerful thing that I did in June was allow myself to not have ideas and be OK with the fact that they would come back. I remember a few years ago, we visited our neighbours at Christmas time and we started talking about creative cycles. One of our lovely neighbours is a painter, who has another friend who is also a painter, who said that they flow through creative cycles where they acknowledge that they need times where they are actively resting away from their painting.
They explained that the resting period is a time when connections are made, and space is made in the brain for new ideas to begin. I thought about it a bit like getting the ground ready and rich in nutrients for new seeds to be planted. Looking back on the last month, although I was resting, I was unintentionally gathering up information and experiences that would provide nutrients (excuse the gardening connection) for new ideas to grow.
I also realise that the cross voice in my head that seemed to be jabbing at my creativity to generate ideas faster, more quickly, felt overbarring. Of course, I want to be kind to that voice - it always wants the best for me, it’s the voice that helps me get things done, but I also realised that it would be really hard to come up with anything if that voice was constantly poking, prodding and asking what the ideas were.
with this in mind, I did a bit of research on resting and how it links with creativity. In Alex SooJung Kim’s book Rest, he talks about how resting isn’t just about sleeping. He says we have to be mindful about actively seeking out time to rest and viewing these times as an investment into and a partnership to our creativity.
Many of the artists that Alex talked about in his book had a regular creative practise, but they seemed to immerse themselves in their creative work for shorter periods of time and then dedicate the rest of their time to restful activities, spending time with their families and other jobs. This made me think of the book Deep Work by Cal Newport, who talks about switching off all distractions and immersing oneself in ‘the big ideas work’ for three to four hours a day before tackling admin like responding to emails, doing the dishwasher, taking the dog out for a walk or hoovering the living room.
However, back in the middle of May and towards the start of June, the thought of telling myself I had to sit for three hours a day and think of creative projects and ideas when I was feeling super stuck felt really intimidating, so I cycled back to the thoughts that I’d had about rest. My neighbours talk of creative cycles, and the rest book made me think of a phase of listening to audiobooks about spending time walking in and noticing nature that I went through a while a go. These books were: Wintering by Katherine May, Landlines by Raynor Winn (- sequel to The Salt Path and The Wild Silence), Orchard by Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates, and Homesick by Catrina Davies. In all of these books, the authors spend time being in and noticing nature whilst building, gardening, walking, swimming and cooking. The restful activities not only acted as a restorative activity for the authors but also formed the basis of their ideas - all of that noticing and being in nature became their actual books, in the end.
It was at this point that I decided to start gardening. I thought that gardening would be the way forward - all of these books told me that spending time in nature and gardening would help. However, I remembered quite quickly that really don’t like gardening, and it soon became apparent that gardening was not a restful activity for me. It dawned on me that I didn’t really know what I liked to do to rest. I knew that I enjoyed listening to audiobooks but that was mostly because it freed up my hands to do something else. I started writing about rest in my morning pages, not something I do every day, but I practice I’ve kept up around three times a week after reading The Artists Way, and I started to think about what I used to love to do (aside from drawing) as a child.
One of the things I started writing about was how much I loved cooking. With my husband away for work, it had been just me in the house and so pasta and pesto (believe me I am not knocking pasta and pesto - it is a firm favourite and a weekly staple) has become almost a daily occurrence. So, I decided to make a curry using a recipe book. I spent time choosing which one I would most like to make, went to the supermarket and carefully chose the ingredients before coming home to start cooking. I remember watching a documentary once that said that the best curries take time to make, so I took my time. It felt good to create a space where I was making something nourishing for myself, that I could freeze ready for future Lucy to enjoy. It was then that I thought that maybe resting in the way that Alex SooJung Kim talks about, is more like how self care isn’t really about bubble baths (although I’m not knocking these either), but its about acts of looking after yourself that let the soil in your brain (yes I know) be ready for those new seeds of ideas to grow.
Over the last month, I’ve started moving my body a bit more, going on longer walks, and leaving my phone at home when I go. I’ve started to slowly frame and hang up some of the art prints that I’ve had for ages, and I helped my dad to build shelves in my back-bedroom studio and spent the day organising things. All of these things felt restorative and good. But so did sitting on my patio for half an hour and listening to my audiobook in the sunshine without doing anything else at the same time.
So far, it’s been about a month into my commitment to making a bit more time to rest, and I’ve started to notice tiny glimmers of ideas creeping their way back into my brain, which feels really quite exciting. I would love to know how you rest, what you enjoy doing, or what you used to enjoy doing for fun as a child.
I’m leaving you with a tomato dahl recipe that my friend told me about, and that I made for Frances when she came to stay last month. I really like the way that you can use it as a base to add other things too and I think I just about know it off by heart now too!
Thanks so much if you’ve read this far and I’ll see you at the end of July,
L xx
Over on Patreon I’ve been sharing a bit more of my drawing process, materials and sketchbooks. This month, I took my Patreons drawing with me in Bath Botanic Gardens, unpicked and recreated some of my favourite colour palates, and I shared all of the drawings from my most recent sketchbook.
