More than just a Pretty Picture

It’s been a little while since posting here on this blog – and every now and then I look back at it longingly and wish I still found the time to write something and hit ‘publish’.

Because whilst I love posting pictures of my finished creations on Instagram and my Facebook Page, sometimes, it feels like all the in-between is lost… all the preparation, the messy bits where things haven’t come together yet, and the way life and creativity merge together… the process is lost, and it’s all about the pretty picture.

I love pretty pictures!! They motivate and inspire me to keep creating, and I genuinely find real joy in composing a picture – in creating something visually uplifting, with very few simple materials – in my case some vintage scarves inherited from my Nanny, some crystals and gems…

But I miss mummy blogging and writing more about our creative projects and processes – because that is where I have the opportunity to reveal some of the messy bits, and some of the things we learn too. Because as well as learning new tricks and skills, our creative adventures can also reflect things that are going on elsewhere in our lives and give us the space to learn about those.

That is the process that I miss writing about. In this moment, I feel compelled to start blogging again - to just get back to writing and reflecting… to see where this leads.

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To begin where I am now, I will start with something small. Whilst I’ve been plenty busy over the last months making fairies to order and creative projects and moments continue to fill our days, what I love it most when we are in those moments of flow and fully noticing.

This little Frida Kahlo study took my daughter several attempts to get ‘right’ (for herself). I noticed how she was completely self-directed in this activity of drawing, and how she took her time to really observe and think about what she was drawing. It surprised me that she chose to draw the picture in miniature, as the images she was studying seemed so bold and all-consuming of the space on the canvass/screen.  When she asked, I sat with her as she struggled to organise the facial features, and watched, as we talked through what she could see, her begin to make sense of how capture on the page her own observations. She looked closely, translated her impressions into words – explaining what she was trying to draw, and then translated them again into lines on the page. Once she finished her little study, she decidedly took out her scissors and cut out the little picture. She then went on to draw a cat because “Frida liked animals in her pictures”.

I loved witnessing and noticing all the work, learning and self-directed growing going on in this little micro-study. I remembered how when I was about 10 years old, I went through a phase of drawing portraits of myself and my friends. As I showed one drawing to my mum, she said “Yes, that’s a very good drawing, but I’m not sure that’s how she holds her mouth”. I learnt so much in that moment, and the memory of it is forever crystalised in my mind. Far from being offended, I learned to look again. To pay close attention, and to really observe.

Creative explorations however large or small, can offer so much learning, and whilst it might be stating the obvious; the real juicy-ness, isn’t just in the pretty picture at the end, but in the messy bits in between – in all it took to get there.

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If I do begin to carve out the time again for writing, I will still blog about our creativity, it’s a lifelong passion after all, but also hopefully merged with a little real life and authenticity, as my mummy-blog used to be.  Capturing not only the end result and lovely pictures of our creations, but also some of the things we learn through our play, exploring, and deliberate seeking out of opportunities to notice all that happens along the way; the mess, the occasional struggles to get something to work, the mishaps as well as all the little triumphs.