JOURNAL
documenting
&
discovering joyful things
An Aristologist's Map of Australia
Aristology (ˌærɪsˈtɒlədʒɪ ): noun, “The art of eating”
I learned a new word this week. It’s “aristology,” which simply means, “the art of eating.” I came across it while googling the definition of another word, “aristologist,” which is essentially “a person who studies the art of eating.”
The word was in a cookbook, first written in 1862, called The English and Australian Cookery Book: Cookery for the Many, as well as the Upper Ten Thousand. Make of “the upper ten thousand” what you will. The author simply labelled himself, “An Australian Aristologist.” Hence my googling.
I’ve actually ordered a copy of this cookbook, and can’t wait to try some of the recipes (although not the recipe for turtle soup!), not least because the author incorporated a number of native Australian ingredients into his recipes.
That’s pretty special, because this cookbook was written in a time when most European Australians had little knowledge and even less interest in learning from this land or its traditional owners. They were much more about importing, imposing and dominating, than listening, learning or respecting. Most of them simply wanted to recreate “Olde England” on our southern shores.
So the idea of a cookbook that actually paid attention to and appreciated the “fruits” of Australia - even for Victorian-era kitchens - is somewhat of an anomaly. I’m excited to try it!
So… while I wait for my new cookbook to arrive, I am also turning my attention to a new project, just for fun, and I wonder if you’d like to be involved?
I came across the map of France, above, recently, where someone had gathered up all the regional dishes or ingredients and placed on the map.
And I thought, how interesting would it be to create something similar for Australia?
After all, Australia has a rich and very diverse food history, that has contributed, today, to a vibrant food culture.
We have native foods grown in certain regions, introduced foods that have come to be synonymous with other regions, dishes created in certain towns, and dishes created elsewhere that certain towns have adopted and made their own.
I’m not fussy, I’m not a food historian, and I’m not looking to enter into established food rivalries: I just think it would be fun to collect up all these regional foods, and make them into a map. Wouldn’t you agree?
So, here is where you come in.
If you know of an ingredient or dish that is special to your town or city, or for which your town or city is famous, let me know. Either pop your thoughts into the comments below, or use the form on this page to share your ideas.
If I get enough food tips to fill a map, I’ll illustrate it myself, painting the foods in watercolours all over a map of our nation. It will be a lovely, collaborative project between me and you, something we create together.
Maybe I’ll be able to turn it into something fun, like a tea towel or a print? And I’ll call my painted map, “An Aristologist’s Map of Australia.” What do you think? Can you help?
A body of work
I called this project #100DaysInDinan. One hundred days can feel as fleeting as a week if you happen to be on sabbatical in a medieval French village with your two children. One hundred days pass in the blink of an eye as you watch those children grow (why are their pants too short again? weren’t they in nappies just yesterday?). Although I’m sure you’ll agree one hundred days can stretch out like a lifetime during lockdown.
When I set myself the challenge of illustrating and posting a miniature postcard every day for a hundred days, I hoped to celebrate the memories of our hundred days in France and make them last a little longer. I also wanted to see if I could establish some kind of creative habit that would last me beyond the project.
In the former, I was very successful. Each miniature illustration took me back to a place, a moment, or a conversation: tiny touchstones that helped to keep me connected with those halcyon days. But in the latter, I have to say I was an abject failure. I still wholeheartedly subscribe to the premise of “doing something creative for 20 minutes a day,” which is where I was going when I set myself this challenge. But the reality is that it took me a lot more than 20 minutes - sometimes several hours - to plan out, draw, paint, annotate and sign each postcard, then trace, cut out and paste together a mini envelope, then look up the next person’s address on my list of a hundred addresses and carefully write their address onto a tiny piece of paper and glue it to the envelope, then look up the postage cost online for the destination country and find the right stamps, then affix a wax seal to the back…
Frequently I struggle to find 20 minutes in my day so multiple hours was just too big an ask. That, and of course I’d have to pack away all my paints and papers every time anyone wanted to eat at the dining table (unreasonable family!), only to bring them all out and set up again the next time I wanted to paint. The reality then of my “one painting a day” project was that I’d knock out seven or eight in a weekend by doing nothing else, and then not get to the rest for another month or two. And so time passed.
I sent the last of the postcards to their new homes during Melbourne’s second lockdown, more than a year after I’d started my “100 days” project. The postal services being what they are at the moment, some of them are even taking 100 days or more to complete their journeys across the world. But I kind of like that. It’s fitting, in its own way, that a project that meant so much to me and was such an unexpectedly enormous labour of love would then take its own sweet time to complete the journey. After all, the postcards I was using were 100 years old or more: they had waited a century to be posted, there was no need to rush to the finish line.
And yet as I slipped the final 12 postcards into the red letterbox outside the post office, I did so with a distinct feeling of underwhelm. All that time. All that work! All those precious memories. All those oceans for my postcards to cross. And I was left with… nothing. Just the empty cardboard packets in which the postcards had been stored, locked away for a hundred years or more in somebody’s drawer.
It occurred to me too late that I had actually created for myself a “body of work.” But by posting them all away one by one, I hadn’t let the pleasant weight of creating that work actually settle.
I had been mindfully in the moment, painting each postcard one at a time, reliving the memory it evoked. But moments in life, while individually precious, are also cumulative, each of them drawing on those that came before and forming the scaffold for those that are yet come. (If you look at it this way, a life is a body of work. Or many bodies of work, to be more accurate.)
My miniature paintings were each part of a larger work, tiles in a mosaic, and while I wasn’t necessarily thinking about them in this way as I painted, the idea must have been there somewhere in my subconscious because instinctively I numbered each of them, solidifying their individual places within the one-hundred. They were never meant to exist on their own, and I learned that truth too late. If I had my time again I’d hold the postcards back, painting them all and then viewing them together to see what kinds of stories they told, before posting them back out into the world.
So now, for you but if I’m honest mostly for myself, I am going to retrospectively survey my body of work.
By pulling all 100 illustrated postcards together in this gigantic blog post, using iPhone photographs I snapped before posting (sometimes quite hastily), I have tried to piece together what this body of work might have been. Doing it this way has felt a little bit like an archaeological dig through my memories, once again painstakingly focusing on each individual item, not seeing the big picture until it is finally done, then standing up at last, stretching my back, and surveying the landscape uncovered.
Here it is, my body of work. A hundred days in the living, a year and a half in the making, and for these postcards, a century in the waiting. I wonder what stories it has to tell, when all the pieces are connected together like this? What does it say to me? Where does it take you?
If I learn the answer I’ll let you know.
Meadow-flowers and sneaky seed-bombs
The week before we left France, I caught up with our friend Rachel, who had been helping the children and I learn French. The children were at Ecole Maternelle that day so it was just me and Rachel. The air was December-cold despite the patchy sun so we sat indoors, at a table by the window, and ordered our coffees.
It was our goodbye: the children’s dad was arriving in a matter of days and then we would all cross the channel for our Christmas holiday in England and Scotland but today, in my final French lesson, Rachel and I wanted to talk about things closer to home. Like the bread vending machine that had been set up in a neighbouring town, because there are laws in France around bread always being available, and the local boulanger had closed down. So the council had a vending machine installed and the bakers from the town next door would stock it every morning with freshly baked baguettes and croissants. Ah, France.
And guerrilla gardening, we talked about guerrilla gardening. Rachel was part of a gardening group in her town that took on the responsibility for beautifying the public areas with green and growing things and, before we said goodbye, she handed me a little packet of seeds. It was a mix of wildflowers that could take root and grow in the tiniest of spaces, the little cracks and grooves between paving, and along the sides of walls. Rachel’s group had been handing these seed packets out for free to residents in their little town, encouraging everyone to scatter them as they walked to encourage diversity and discourage weeds, so now she did the same to me.
I carried the seed-packet home with me and I have been imagining myself as some kind of “meadow-flower Johnny Appleseed” ever since, skipping through Melbourne scattering wildflower-seeds wherever I go, turning my inner-city suburb into a bejewelled field of flowers.
But there are strict biosecurity rules in Australia and so I have never had the courage to open that little packet of seeds. It sits in the 18th Century writing desk I also brought home from France, among other mementoes I hold precious from that time, and has instead inspired home-grown wildflower melanges.
The company behind the seed packet Rachel gave me has been specialising in growing and harvesting meadow flowers for more than 70 years, and they sell mixtures of seeds for every imaginable use. Wildflowers that can be mown over; wildflowers that attract bees; wildflowers that change throughout the seasons. Wildflowers that grow in poor soil; wildflowers for cemeteries; wildflowers for damp and boggy earth. Tall wildflowers, small wildflowers, wildflowers in colours that suggest a medieval carpet (I’m not kidding), and on it goes. Hello, magical occupation envy!
So I have decided to create some wildflower mixes of my own, using seeds safely grown here in Australia. Lacking any handy meadow-space anywhere nearby to create glorious fields of flowers en masse, I’ve gone with “seed bombs” instead, and that’s what I really wanted to share with you in this blog post.
Seed bombs, or seed balls, are simply little balls of clay, compost and seeds, rolled up and left to harden and dry. They are a guerrilla gardener’s best friend because you can just drop these little balls wherever you want your seeds to grow: they’ll sit there innocently until the next proper, soaking rain falls, allowing them to germinate and take root, helped by the tiny starter-soil you’ve given them with the clay and compost.
If you’d like to try making seed bombs, my method is below, along with the “wildflower seed recipe” I created (for medium-height wildflowers that grow well together in spring and summer in a meadow setting, many of them chosen to enrich the soil and encourage pollinators).
If you’ve ever made and shared seed bombs before - or if you give it a try after reading this blog post - I’d love to know how you get on!
Wildflower seed bombs
Wildflower meadow mix
Assorted poppies
Cornflowers
Silene pink
False Queen Anne’s Lace
Chocolate Queen Anne’s Lace
Love-in-a-mist
Flax
Coriander
Alfalfa
Buckwheat
Seed bomb recipe
Equal parts of clay (I used modelling clay from the local art supplies store), and
Compost (I used “zoo poo”)
A handful of vermiculite, a natural mineral that fosters plant growth
Your mix of wildflower seeds (or see mine, left)
Method
In a bucket, soak the clay in some water to soften it and make a mushy, easy-to-manipulate, muddy gloop
Add in the compost and vermiculite and mix them all around with your hands until everything blends together
Sprinkle the seeds over the top, and stir them in with your hands
Now roll your clay/compost/seed mix up into little balls about the size of ping-pong balls, and set them aside to dry
When you are ready, start spreading the floral joy!
ps. The wildflower meadow pictured here was at Hever Castle in Kent, UK. The children and I spent an afternoon there (can you spot Ralph, then aged four, racing through the flowers in the photograph above?) and it was every bit as heavenly as you’d imagine it to be.
As promised, the "tea stories" zine
As promised, I’ve made a little zine, celebrating “tea stories” from all over the world. A heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who shared their stories on this blog post, as well as those of you who emailed me privately. And especially to Nanette via Instagram, who posted me a box of Dutch Tea and Lady Grey Tea all the way from The Netherlands, when I told her I didn’t know what Lady Grey Tea was.
I had seriously so much fun making this zine. I decided to embrace my inner-90s self, and made this thing completely old-school. I painted the pictures below then glued them in, drew others in by hand, cut old ads out of magazines, and hand-wrote most of the stories. So what you see here is something truly handmade, warts and spelling mistakes and stickytape-lines and all.
What I learned as I hand-wrote all of your stories, was that our mutual love of tea, while it is undeniably delicious, isn’t really about the taste at all. Tea is about taking a moment: it’s about self-care, it’s about slowing down, it’s about comfort, it’s about mindfulness… and more than anything, tea is about the people we love. Whether shared with our loved-ones or sipped in their memories, tea connects us and comforts us.
(I suspect that if coffee is more your beverage of choice, or hot chocolate, the same could probably be said of these drinks, too. Maybe one day I’ll make a zine for you.)
So, here’s the zine I made you: simply click the arrows on the right to flip through the pages, and if you want to make it bigger, hover over the zine and you’ll see an option to view it in “fullscreen”. (If all the pages in the flip-book aren’t showing for you, you can download a readable PDF here). I really hope you enjoy reading Tea Stories as much as I loved making it.
Download and print this zine
If you want to download the PDF and print this zine for yourself or your friends, simply click the button below. The file has been laid out so that you can print it back-to-back. It will print this way onto 10 sheets of paper, which you can simply fold in half, together, to have the whole zine laid out in the correct order. (It’s designed to fit onto A4 paper so if you use US Letter or Foolscap, you may want to trim it slightly.)
Once you’ve made up the booklet, if you want to post it to friend (perhaps with some of your favourite teabags tucked inside), you can simply fold it in half again to fit a standard letter size (although it will be fat).
OK I’ve got to go, I think I hear the kettle singing.
Naomi xo
The time spent navigating memories
It’s a slow process. I don’t just mean the making of the #100DaysInDinan project: combing through old photographs for inspiration, sketching a rough idea onto my antique postcards, going over it in pen, painting it. Then finding old pages from magazines, tracing onto them around the envelopes that had held the postcards for a century, folding them into place, then copying addresses onto paper and pasting them onto the front of the envelopes…
All this takes time, and perhaps in retrospect one a day was too ambitious.
But the real time is spent navigating memories. As I paint I walk my memories like I walked those old, cobblestoned streets, a hundred times over, during the 100 days we lived in Dinan.
As I sketch the outline of a fresh baguette, I am back there again, standing outside Boulangerie Banette with my children, tearing the still-warm loaf into into smaller pieces to share, and the smell is the best in the world: nutty, malty, a hug.
Scout announces, “I can’t go a single day in the world without this bread,” and from that day on, our baker Mohommed keeps one or two baguettes aside for us - and often throws in some free croissants and Nutella crepes - in case they sell out before we get there (which they often do).
Now as I paint I am climbing the steep hill to the castle ruins in the village next door and I can feel the muscles in my legs burning all over again. (And oh! That wicker picnic basket is heavy! Why did I think a picnic blanket was necessary? And did we really need that much water?).
My memories tumble onwards, gaining momentum like my children rolling down a steep and grassy hill on a sunny day, squealing with laughter. I think about the friendly grey cat at the ruins that had so enchanted Ralph. He sat among the wildflowers inside the crumbling castle walls and patted the wild cat while it purred like a tractor, and I dug into the bottom of that heavy wicker picnic basket for the hand sanitiser I was sure I’d packed somewhere. We learned that French cats don’t much mind if your French is somewhat lacking.
I paint my feet in canvas shoes, dangling over the canal on a quiet jetty. As I do it, I taste again the honey and walnut cake I’d baked the day before, and carried with us on our walk. I remember throwing crumbs for ducks that wouldn’t come, and watching the tiny bubbles and rings in the water made by unseen fish coming up to feed.
On comes the summer’s day we spent in nearby Saint Malo, digging and splashing in the beach all day and then running the whole three kilometres back to the bus stop just in time for the last bus home… only to discover the timetable had changed the day before, and we were trapped. So we trudged the three kilometres back into town and found a little hotel. We ate bananas dunked in yoghurt for dinner and it was hot, so hot, so we all slept in our underwear on a big bed. I left the window open all night and watched the moon rise slowly over slate rooftops and terra cotta chimney pots as my children slept.
It slows me. I start with an anecdote but all too soon I am lost in a fully-fledged memory, and follow that path deeper and deeper into the wilds of nostalgia.
It washes over me, a longing to be back inside those slower days once more. I was mindful then, truly mindful, consciously taking in everything: watching it, feeling it, tasting it, and appreciating it. Committing it to memory as best I could, not wanting to miss a thing, not wanting to lose any of it.
So when I paint and I am slow, I don’t mind. A hundred memories is taking me more than a hundred days to record, but this project has become exactly what it set out to be: a process in gratitude.
The memory-map
The first thing I painted was the 14th-Century chateau, one night after we had explored it with our friend Tonia. We’d set out early that morning with a backpack stuffed with chopped vegetables, bananas, baguettes and the homemade koulourakia we’d baked the day before from a Meals in the Mail recipe, to walk the ramparts all the way around town.
At the chateau we stopped to catch our breath and polish off our little lunch, sitting on the ancient stone wall amid glorious pink and red flowers, before buying four tickets at the gate and heading inside to explore. The chateau is formally known as “donjon de la duchesse Anne,” or “the keep of Duchess Anne,” a woman beloved as a ruler and protector of Brittany from 1488 until her death, as well as being Queen Consort of France (twice).
Today, her keep is almost empty: no roped-off antiques or baltic pine replicas here, just empty rooms with carved shutters half-closed over diamond-paned windows. It made space for the ghosts, and we could almost feel the past walking among us in those empty rooms. We climbed the narrow spiral-stone staircase up, up, wandering the rooms where once the Duchess Anne ate, conversed and slept, until we emerged to blinding sun and gusting winds on the roof. Then we headed down. Down, down, into the smoke-stained ‘dungeon’ of a kitchen, where there were no windows and Tonia and I had to use our iPhones as torches so that we could all make it down the final flight of stairs without breaking any limbs.
At various levels (especially in the guards’ rooms), medieval toilets were cut into the stone and, from the smell, were still occasionally in use. We only just - with seconds to spare - managed to stop four-year-old Ralph from doing the same, and the laughter from our little party at this lucky escape carried us all the way back to our still-new (to us) apartment.
So later that night, when the children were sleeping the deserved sleep of the utterly exhausted and Tonia and I sat up eating cheese and drinking rosé, I drew the chateau on the blank paper of my future map, and wrote our little story down next to it.
Piece by piece, as we built memories, I added them to the map. Picnics at the nearby ruins. Baguettes from our favourite boulangerie. Trips to Saint Malo, le Mont Saint Michel, and Broceliande. The carousel the children loved to ride, where first Scout announced, “Our town is amazing!” The church with the bells that punctuated our days and nights with such beauty. The big, old English sheepdog we called Sarah, from that time I said “Look, that dog has it’s hair up” and Ralph replied, “How do you know it’s called Sarah?”
Painting at night after each adventure, there wasn’t any strategy or forethought to the map, and this made for lots of mistakes. I painted the Thursday markets one evening after carrying home the week’s bounty, and, a few days later, drew in the clock tower behind it after we had climbed to the top. Then a month or two further along, when I decided I needed to paint in the grand old buildings that lined the market square, the clock tower was already in the way. In my painting it has grown legs and journeyed a full block away from the rue de l’horloge, where it stood since 1498. I drew Sarah the dog before adding in the buildings around her, and it turned out she was not even remotely to scale. I had accidentally turned her into a canine giant, eclipsed only by the baguettes, which are the size of some houses. Saint Malo was on a wonky slope, the abbey at Lehon slid over onto the very bottom of the paper, and a strange, ibex-like creature on the carousel loomed over everything else.
The mistakes have come to be my favourite parts of this map. I could have waited, of course, collecting these moments in my mind to faithfully reproduce them back home. Carefully copying or tracing a roadmap of Dinan, and then plotting out our favourite memories with both accuracy and artistic arrangement.
In fact, that was my original intention in making the map. After taking multiple wrong turns when trying to follow the map of the ramparts given to us by the Dinan tourism office, Tonia and I joked that I’d paint a more accurate one, and give it to them when we left.
But the best adventures are unplanned and precious moments come unbidden. And if you don’t stop to notice them when they happen, those moments can journey on by, altogether unseen.
So I chose mindfulness over method, thankfulness over design, and pasted my little acts of gratitude like patchwork all over the paper, living each drawing in the moment without pausing to plan the final piece.
When we left the village in December, I didn’t know what to do with the map. The handmade paper was so thick and large it couldn’t fit into a tube, so I carried it with me from Dinan to Paris, Paris to London, London to Cumbria, Cumbria to Inverness, Inverness to Edinburgh, and Edinburgh to Melbourne, Australia. After we returned home, it lay rolled up and forgotten on the sofa-bed in our front room for a month, buried under clothes awaiting dry-cleaning, until finally in mid-February I uncovered it and found the time - and emotional fortitude - to finish what I had started on that hot summer’s day at the chateau, back in August.
So here it is, in all its wonky, unplanned, mistake-ridden, navigationally-bereft, emotionally-rich glory. The story-map of our sabbatical in France, and a pen-and-paint act of thanksgiving.
Painting hacks (and it's ok if you're not doing it right)
Recently when I wrote my frequently asked questions post, I deliberately neglected to answer one of the questions I get asked the most often… “Can you teach me how to paint?”
The truth is that I have never felt confident enough to ‘teach’ painting, because in order to teach something it helps if you actually know what you are doing yourself! I am completely self-taught when it comes to my illustrations, and by “self taught” I mean I just keep painting, experimenting and practising… I haven’t read any books or watched any YouTube videos to improve my techniques.
(Although I’m actually hoping to remedy that this year, and take some formal lessons in botanical illustration at the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne, so maybe one day in the future I’ll have something more useful to share on here.)
But in the meantime, rather than teach you how to paint in any strict, best-practise or rules-based way, I am going to share some of the tips, tricks, hacks and techniques that I have stumbled across so far on my illustration journey.
Why it’s ok to not do it right
Because I’ve never received proper training, it is highly possible that the things I share are not the best way to do things, or that I’m simply “not doing it right.” And I think it’s important that we all seek ways to feel comfortable with this, when it comes to our own creative work.
“Not doing it right” is why I’ve held back on sharing too much in terms of how-to-paint content in the past (fear that I’m not doing it right, and fear that I’d therefore be teaching you to ALSO not do it right).
But now I’m thinking differently, and I’m going to call myself out on this defeatist attitude. Really, it’s just another form of “imposter syndrome,” the feeling most of us experience sometimes (or often) - especially when it comes to creativity - that we are not good enough, even when others appreciate our creations - and that any minute, the world will see us for the failures we secretly believe we really are.
Why do our brains do this to us?? This blog is not the place to explore the depths of human psychology (although I do talk a lot about imposter syndrome and the Inner Critic in my Create with Confidence course), but today I will stand up to my own Inner Critic and hopefully bolster you to stand up to your own, by sharing my perfectly-imperfect tips for watercolour painting.
My hope? That you will a) find some tips in here that are useful, but b) even if nothing here is useful, that you will feel empowered to experiment, play and create, without the constraints of “doing it right.” Just go for it!
Ok, shall we get started?
1. It’s ok to pencil first
You know those Instagram and YouTube videos in which people deftly put wet brushes to clean, white paper and in a matter of minutes create beautiful floral wreaths or sleepy cats on cosy couches, or potted succulents in greenhouses full of charm?
Yep, I can’t do that either.
I sketch my picture out using pencil first (2B because anything darker becomes harder to rub out later), then use waterproof black pens (my preferred brand is Sakura Pigma Micron) to draw it exactly the way I want it to look. Depending on what I’m wanting for the finished product, I add in more or less pen detail, and when that’s done, I rub out the pencil marks.
By the time I come to do the painting, it’s really not much more than colouring in.
2. Painting tools (otherwise known as “You can get your paints from the supermarket”)
My father always used to tell me “It’s a poor workman who blames his tools,” and this is as true in the art-room as it is in the workshop, garden or kitchen. To whit: great tools can make life a lot easier, but they are no substitute for elbow-grease and practise.
For many years, I used sets of watercolours and gouache paints picked up in a toy-store and supermarket respectively. From time to time I still dip into my kids’ Crayola paints, and have used them for all kinds of projects, including illustrations I’ve been paid to create. Until two years ago, I was still using the used gouache paint set my grandmother gave me when I was 10 years old.
In case you’re wondering which is which:
Watercolour paints are made by mixing colour-pigment with binder. The paint is applied by wetting it and then brushing it onto paper. Once the water dries, the binder fixes the pigment to the paper. Watercolours are super-versatile because you can make the colour stronger or weaker depending on how much water you use, and you can easily blend them together or layer them over each other in-situ (i.e. on the painting itself) to create almost any colour or shade you want
Gouache paints are very similar to watercolour paints, except that an extra white pigment (like chalk) is added, to make them brighter and more opaque. (Think Toulouse-Lautrec posters and you’ll know what gouache looks like). You can also blend gouache and watercolour with one another to create just the right colour or intensity you want
Even now, my “best” paints are really hobby-grade paints (I have Winsor & Newton watercolours in a set and Reeves gouache in tubes). I’m sure an upgrade would be a good thing, but I haven’t made the plunge so far and, if you’re starting out and don’t have the means or desire to invest just yet, don’t let that stop you: some decent brushes (my favourites are 'Expression' brushes by Daller-Rowney) and a good feel for colour-blending are all you need to create lovely paintings.
Which leads me to…
3. Colour-blending 101
Alright, most of us know that there are only three primary colours (colours you can’t mix from others): red, yellow and blue. With the help of black and white, you can realistically create all the colours, shades and tones you need with just these basics.
Luckily for us, most paint sets come with a lot more options, so when we are ‘blending’, it’s to create subtlety and more realism. This is how I blend my colours:
First, I get a non-porous palette on which to mix my colours. I have an old plastic paint palette that used to belong to my grandmother, but anything non-porous will do. I also use dinner-plates, the plastic lids of my paints, anything I have handy at the time
Onto that palette, I add a small amount of the first colour, either by adding a lot of water (via my brush) to a hard colour in a paint set, or by squeezing a tiny bit of that colour from a tube
Next, I add my second colour to the palette - nearby but not touching the first - in the same way. And so on for any subsequent colours. So for example if I was making purple, I’d do this with blue and red.
Now I’ll bring a tiny bit of one colour into the middle, and a tiny bit of the other colour into the middle, and mix them together. Based on what that looks like, I’ll add little bits more of one or the other colour, until it looks right. At this point if necessary, I might bring in some other tones, for example a bit of yellow to give it warmth, or white to brighten it up, or a tiny bit of black to tone it down.
The trick is to do all of this gradually, one small bit of colour at a time, so that you can rectify any mistakes or any time you’ve overdone it with one colour, and build up slowly until you get exactly the shade you want.
If necessary, I test my blends on a scrap piece of paper, just to see how they look once they dry, and also to test how much water to add, to create the look I’m going for.
Once I’m happy, I use this new colour on my painting. If I find I’m running out, I start the process all over again but make sure to do it before the original blend has run out, so that I can match the shade as closely as possible so that my painting remains consistent.
4. Colour-blending combinations that come in handy
While travelling for five months I had only the smallest of travel-paint sets, so I had to do a lot more blending to get the colours I like, than I do at home. I am drawn to a muted colour palette with soft, natural tones. But my little travel paint-kit was full of bright and primary colours. Here are some of my personal thoughts on colour, and some of my favourite combinations to achieve the tones I love.
First of all, I have something to say about black. I’ve learned from experience that black can easily dominate a watercolour picture. Look around you: most of the things you think on first impressions are black are not actually true black - most likely they are a kind of dark grey, or a warm kind of black or a cool kind of black… do you see what I mean? For this reason, I almost never use actual black in my paintings (other than in the ink outlines). Instead, I either water it down heavily until it becomes a kind of grey, or I use this blend in the top row…
TOP ROW: The “sort-of black” here is achieved by blending dark blue and dark brown together. If I want a warmer black I add more brown, if I want it cooler I add more blue. Because it’s not “true black,” it looks more natural on the page.
SECOND ROW: I mix light-brown, orange and white together with a fair bit of water to create this kind of neutral sand, which forms the base for all kinds of other colours I need. It goes well with greens, and is also a good starting point for skin-tones, as it can go lighter, darker, or a touch pinker
THIRD ROW: I paint a lot of botanicals, but find the ready-made greens are often unnatural. Also, there are just so many shades of green in nature, just one or two won’t cut it. Depending on what I have to hand, I most often mix a lighter green with a darker green, and then play with adding either light brown, yellow, or the sand I created in the second row above, to get the right tone for the leaf I’m painting.
FOURTH ROW: I’m not a fan of “candy pink” but I love a duskier pink in everything from flowers to sunsets to balls of knitting and an old lady’s hat. I get this by blending the dark red in my paint set with a kind of fire-engine red/orange also in the set, and then adding white until I get the exact depth I want.
BOTTOM ROW: The dove blue/grey here is one of my favourite colours, and I get it by mixing royal blue (as opposed to the dark blue of the top row) with dark brown, and white. It is a much prettier and more natural sky than just watered-down blue, and by adding a tiny bit more brown I can turn it into a lovely, soft grey, that is nice for animal fur, for example, or to add shading and texture to the bark of trees.
(NOT PICTURED BUT HANDY): Purple is quite difficult to make. Most of us know to blend blue with red, but too much red and you quickly get brown instead. I try going lighter first: I’d probably blend the dusky-pink and dove-blue colours in the bottom two rows together, to create a soft kind of lilac, then I’d add more of any of the colours in those two rows bit by bit, in order to get the exact tone I wanted. For me, this is easier than starting from scratch with just red and blue.
4. How to shade a painting
One of the easiest ways to bring a painting to life is to add shading. This not only makes whatever you’re painting look more three dimensional, it also adds interest and texture to what you have created. Imagine a painting of a cactus in a terra-cotta pot. You could simply paint the pot a terra-cotta kind of orange, OR you could create shading to help it look round, rough-to-touch, and give it that lovely aged patina that real terra-cotta gets.
Here are some of my tips and hacks for shading a painting:
A consistent light-source
The most important thing is to imagine a consistent light-source. Imagine shining a spotlight on whatever it is you are painting, or imagine which way the sun is shining or where the window is. Keep that light-source consistent in your entire pattern. It will do all kinds of weird things to people’s brains if the shadows on one part of your picture are on the left, and in the other part they are on the right. Light doesn’t do that (unless you’re a surrealist painter).
It’s lighter where the light is (duh, Naomi)
If the light is coming from the right, everything on the right-hand side of your picture (from terra-cotta pots to trees to animals to a bottle of wine) will be lighter and brighter on the right, and darker on the left. If the light is shining straight in front of your thing (like your terra-cotta pot), then it will be lighter and brighter in the middle, and get darker on either side. If the light is coming from directly above, the leaves at the top of your plant will probably be lighter than those at the bottom.
Shadows are not only about light and dark
Shadows don’t have to be created by simply applying lighter and darker versions of the same colour. Here are some of the ways that I create shadows in order suggest a light-source and create interest:
a) By using more or less intensity of the same colour (by adding more water to make it less intense)
b) By putting a watery drop of dark-blue, black or dark-grey into the areas that I want to shadow, after applying the first ‘main’ colour
c) By blending up two versions of a colour, one that is darker and/or more intense for the areas that are to be in shadow (for example in the case of a terra-cotta pot, I will often blend up two versions of the neutral ‘sand’ colour I shared above, one that has slightly more light brown in it, and another with a bit more pink. The first will be my main ‘in the light’ colour, and the second will be the darker shadows)
d) By using a completely different colour for the shadows, which might be unexpected but, because it is darker or stronger than the lighter areas, still tells viewers’ brains: “this is shadow.”
e) By painting the object one colour, and then “blotting away” the part I imagine to be in the sun, by pressing a paper-towel down over that part. Pressing the paper towel down immediately will remove all the colour. Instead, I like to wait a short while (a minute or thereabouts) and then press - that will take away some of the intense colour, but leave a softer version.
What ever technique you use to create shadows, if you want to have a soft or even invisible transition between the light and shade sections, a good tip is to take a clean, wet paintbrush and gently brush water over those “transition lines.” I don’t always bother with this because sometimes I like things to look a bit more rough and deliberate, but you can create a very natural, organic transition from light to shade if you want to, just using water in this way.
Here are some examples of different ways I’ve created shadows:
In this partial painting of a castle in Dinan, I used a watery dark blue to create the shadows, despite there not actually being any “blue shadows” on the golden stone walls
In this painting of a whale I made for a Boots Paper greeting card, I used a rather unnatural aqua blue as the shading at the bottom of his belly. The brightness of the blue, and contrast to the much more washed out almost-white of his body, creates the shade I wanted, while also suggesting a watery “whale in ocean” feel that I wanted, despite not painting the ocean
In this greenhouse mail-art picture, I used three different blends on the terra cotta pots to show the light, middle and dark sections of the pots (and to add interest and texture), and blotted some of the way almost entirely, then added white paint, in the areas I wanted to appear super-light. (Here is another picture of pots in which I was - slightly - more subtle in the shading)
5. Paper, and paper towels
Paper weight
(As in, the weight of the paper, not the old-fashioned paperweight that your grandfather kept on his desk).
In general, it is best to paint with watercolours and gouache on paper that has been specially made for that purpose. Watercolour paint is thicker than ordinary paper, which helps to stop it from going bumpy and buckling with all that water. So to give you an idea:
Ordinary copy-paper is usually 80gsm (gsm just stands for “grams per square metre” and refers to the weight, or thickness, of the paper)
A fairly average watercolour paper thickness is 185gsm
Obviously, you can experiment to see what works for you. I have used copy paper plenty of times in my mail-art, and just flatten it down under books overnight if it buckles too much.
But if you pop into an art supplies store and ask to buy watercolour paper, it can be a little overwhelming. There’s weight, there’s texture, and there’s all those different methods of making the paper itself. How do you choose?
Here’s what I have experienced so far (although please remember - see the top of this longgggg blog post - that I am an amateur):
Rough, textured watercolour paper looks fantastic on those old watercolour landscape paintings you might have seen. It gives a lovely tactile feel to the painting
If you want to paint something for printing (such as something for a book or stationery, like my illustrations for Boots Paper), the texture might go against you, because it will stand out too much against the smoothness of the page elsewhere
Paper that is “hot pressed” gives you that smooth feel I’m talking about, and the other benefit is that the paint dries quite quickly on it so you can layer your colours on quickly
Paper that is “cold pressed” tends to be slightly more textured (though not necessarily as rough as the old-fashioned paper I mentioned earlier) so the paint stays wet longer if you want to create some effects using water and blends. (As an example of this, take a look at the image of food around a grey dinner plate I shared earlier: the dinner plate was left blank because a logo was going to be added inside it, but for subtle interest, I used a lot of water to create that slightly ‘bleeding’ effect you see, reminiscent of glazed pottery)
Most watercolour paper is either cream or white - think about what you mostly like to paint when you choose, and the tones you prefer. For my Boots Paper illustrations I use a slightly more creamy background, because that is what Boots’ owner, Brenner, prefers. For my own work I like a brighter white, because I prefer cooler tones
Preparing the paper
Confession: I never do this. I mean never. I have never even tried it. However… best practise is probably to stretch and then tape down watercolour paper, to ensure you have a perfectly flat surface, and that the paper doesn’t buckle with all the water you apply.
Perhaps if I painted more landscape-style images with big wash areas, I’d have felt the need to learn how to prepare my paper sooner, and have cultivated this good habit. Because my illustrations are mostly quite small, it hasn’t been an issue (so far).
If you want to learn how to prepare your paper (or want to teach me), here’s a tutorial.
Paper towels
My favourite painting tool, other than paints, brushes and water, is a trusty paper towel. My favourites are the kinds that have little patterns embossed on them. I always have one or two paper towels beside me when I paint, and I use them to:
Clean brushes (after I’ve cleaned them in water, I wipe them off on paper towels to be sure they don’t have any paint residue left on them)
Blot away mistakes (if the paint is still wet, you can blot it with a paper towel and you are magically back to blank paper! Even if the paint has partly dried, try wetting it thoroughly with a brush, then blotting)
Blot sections of an image to create a feeling of light and shade, as I mentioned above
Create texture. If there are embossed patterns on the paper towel, it can be fun to actually use this in my painting: I press the paper towel over the paint while it is not quite dry (but not super wet or the paint will disappear) to create a fun, mottled pattern
Here is a short video in which I use a paper towel to create light and shade in my picture, let the paint partially dry (while I sip tea, naturally), then create a new layer in a different colour.
I hope this blog post was useful! I feel a little bit silly and vulnerable writing about “how to” on something I really do just muddle through, and feel about as far from being an expert as you can possibly imagine.
This lack of training probably makes me a fairly poor instructor: if there was something you were wanting to know from me about how I do my painting, but I’ve failed to mention it here, feel free to ask away. Likewise, if this actually is useful to you and you’d like to know more (such as some tips on drawing, for example, which in all honesty would be equally bumbled-through), let me know and I’ll see what I can come up with.
But no matter what, I DO hope this long post inspires you to pick up that dusty old paint-set (yes, the one you picked up for your kids at the supermarket) and wile away an afternoon playing with colour.
Frequently asked
I thought it was about time I answered the questions I receive the most, somewhere that they could all be found in one place. Have I missed something you’d like to know? Feel free to ask away in the comments, and I promise to reply.
Here we go…
How do you get watercolours to show up brightly on brown kraft paper?
The secret is they’re not just watercolours. I also use gouache paints, which look and feel pretty much the same, but are chalkier in consistency, and brighter and more opaque on the paper. Back in the old days, poster artists often worked in gouache. I mix my gouache and watercolour paints together within my images (and often combine them with one another to create the exact colour and consistency I want).
What pens do you use in your artwork?
I use fine-line archival ink pens for outlines and details in my paintings, and to write the addresses in my mail-art. The ink is waterproof, so it doesn’t run with the paints. My favourites are these Sakura Pigma Micron pens, and I have a collection of nib sizes that range from 005 (very fine for detailed work) to 05 (thick and bold, good for addresses).
Where can I find likeminded pen-pals?
There are loads of places to find people to write to. Pen-pal groups, yes, but also other projects and programs through which you can brighten someone’s day with a handwritten letter. I shared a list of some of my ideas for the show notes of this podcast episode with Tea & Tattle (scroll to the bottom of the show notes to find the list). I also teach about finding like-minded people to write to (and people who will write back) in my letter-writing e-course.
What camera do you use on your blog and Instagram?
To be honest, 99 percent of my photographs these days are taken using my iPhone. I have a DSLR Olympus PEN camera that I love, and it definitely takes better pictures, but the reality is that I can’t always carry it with me everywhere I go. The iPhone lets me capture small surprises and spontaneous moments in my day, no matter where I am.
Whats happening with the Meals in the Mail project?
Ahhh, that project. Meals in the Mail remains one of the favourite projects I’ve ever run. Here’s where it’s at: at the start, I promised to turn all the recipes into a book, but I received more than 250 letters (after expecting 20-50). To share the recipes, mail-art and stories in this way would make for a book that was around 750 pages long, which would be as unwieldy and impractical as it would be impossibly expensive, so I had to rethink.
I dabbled with the idea of giving the project its own blog instead, but that felt flat to me, and didn’t do these wonderful letters justice. So right now I am in the midst of making the recipes myself, one at a time, and talking to the makers about their food and the stories that make them special, for a podcast project. I can’t wait to share when it’s ready.
When will your snail-mail book come out?
Soon! The copy is finished and edited, the cover is done, and the design is in place. I am finalising some extra illustrations needed, and then it’s off to print. More about this book here.
How do you find the time for all your creative projects?
I could be glib and say there’s never enough time, and that’s certainly true to an extent. I’m definitely not as productive as I’d like to be (case in point the snail-mail book above, which has been in progress for more than four years!). But I do have some tips for finding or making time to be creative, or maximising the little bit of time we have. I’ve put them all into a little e-book called “Time to Make,” which you can download for free when you subscribe to my newsletter (which you can do here).
How can I do more with my creative ideas / start selling my creative work?
I teach all of my knowledge on the personal aspects of creativity (creative block, perfectionism, confidence, time, those sorts of things) in my hybrid coaching and e-course, Create With Confidence which runs once a year. For people who want help going public to share or sell their creative work I have a self-paced course called the Sales & Social Masterclass for Makers, which you can join at any time. I also share tips for free in my newsletter, and am happy to answer your questions via email.
Why and how did you come to spend so much time in France?
Think of that self-imposed sabbatical as me cashing in my ‘holiday savings’ after seven years of not stopping. The idea was my husband’s, after he knew he’d be heading to Italy for work in 2018, and thought that if the children and I were nearby we could all meet up.
We chose to stay in Brittany in France because that’s my family background on my father’s side, and we wanted the children to learn a little of the language and culture that was part of their heritage. At ages four and six, with Scout only in her first year of school, it was an ideal time to travel, before missing so much school became a problem.
I am lucky that I work from home, so I didn’t need to take leave from any bosses. I worked ridiculous hours in the lead-up to the trip, which in retrospect wasn’t the healthiest of ways to save money (ever heard of just “not spending,” Naomi?) but even so, we will be probably be paying off the debts incurred during this time for quite a while.
It was worth it.
That’s it from me for now. As I said, please feel free to ask me anything I haven’t covered yet here. Or (better still), tell me about you! What do you love, make, do, feel?
Tea at dawn
This is when I do my best work. In the pre-dawn, while most of the world sleeps.
I'm not a masochist, nor a particularly motivated person. It's just that I'm a morning person so I wake early naturally, and of course it makes sense to get as much work done as I can while the children sleep. My brain is rested, and rejuvenated, and I can do my best work at this time. I wrote my book The Art of Mail almost entirely between the hours of five and six in the morning. I write most of my blog posts at five, and that's when I research and craft most of my courses.
Last month I put out a survey in my newsletter, asking people to share with me the biggest challenges they faced when it came to being creative. I gave them a list of choices, based on previous conversations I'd had. Hurdles they faced, like needing accountability, lack of confidence, and too many distractions. I received hundreds of responses to this survey, and the number one reason - in fact more than 80 percent of people ticked this box - was this:
"I want to be more creative but I don't have enough time."
A lot of them felt super frustrated with the popular 'wisdom' that is often spouted about finding time: "If you want it badly enough, you'll make the time." They felt disempowered by this statement and, personally, I think it is cruel. It's one thing expecting people to take responsibility for their own lives - which we all should! - but it is way too simplistic to say "You don't want it badly enough" to someone who struggles to make time for the things that give them joy.
I have a job, and that takes time. I am trying to build a business, and that takes even more time. I have a husband and two small children. They take a LOT of time. My husband works 80+ hours a week so I essentially run our house on its own. That takes a good whack of time too. I don't have a car, so even getting from A to B if I need to do something like buy milk takes more time out of my day than it otherwise might. This list could go on, as I'm sure yours could too.
And it's not as though I could drop any of those other responsibilities, even if I wanted to (I generally don't want to). I need to work because my family relies on my income. I need to look after my children because my husband is at work and, while they have school and childcare on some days, they also need their parents! I need to cook and clean and otherwise run the house because if I didn't, we'd be living in a pile of rubbish comprised of dirty clothes, lego pieces, dust bunnies and food scraps, while eating takeout for every meal.
But where in my busy life - or in yours - is the room for creating? For making just for the sake of making? For learning something new? For playing with art? For self-improvement?
Right now I'm working on a short course made specifically for all those lovely people who responded to my survey, about how to find (or make) time to be creative. It is about guilt-free ways we can use more of our time for the things that spark joy, and train our brains to be more creative, without feeling as though we need to drop our responsibilities or small pleasures.
That will come very soon (if you happen to be awake at 5am Melbourne time on most days, you'll be able to picture me sitting at my desk with a hot cup of tea, writing it). In the meantime, today I thought I'd share something else that several people in the survey asked for: an idea of what a typical day looks like for me. How do I divide up my time, they wanted to know, to fit in all those things.
The short answer is, of course, that I generally fail in one area or another. I'm not super-human and I regularly feel as though I'm playing catch-up, or having to reshuffle priorities. Also, my day - just like yours - is never typical. So, bearing that in mind, here is a rough idea of what my days look like on one of the three days a week that my children are in childcare.
The day always starts with tea
5am: I make a cup of tea and take it into my office (a tiny, windowless room that is actually a converted wine cellar. It is always more cluttered and messier than I'd like it to be). I work on a key writing project, such as course material, book copy, blog posts. At some point during this time my husband usually gets up, showers, and leaves for work.
6.30am: The children get up. I close the computer, we have cuddles, then get breakfast ready. We put on music (the children call it "calm music" and generally it's classical music at this time of morning), and we sit at the table together to eat. I try not to rush this and I try not to have my phone in my hand. We talk about the day ahead. What's on at school or kinder, any reading they've been doing, events that happened the day before (often they are too tired and their heads are too busy to talk in the afternoon, but it all comes out over breakfast). In Scout's case, there are often elaborate discussions about what she will wear for that day.
7am: While the children are still eating and chatting, I make their lunches and pack their lunch boxes, then check they have everything they need packed in their bags (hats, sunscreen, lunches, bottles of water, tissues, readers, library books, signed permission slips, and a change of clothes in case of over-enthusiastic water-play). At this point I often also realise I have forgotten to let the cat out, so I open up the little outdoor room where she sleeps.
Honestly, mornings are mostly lovely. Last year they were hectic, but now we are in a rhythm, and most mornings we have fun. Sometimes we change up the "calm music" for something more lively, and take a moment to dance together around the kitchen.
(At some time after breakfast, I aim to post an Instagram picture. I choose this time because I find that for me, a lot of my tribe are also online at that time, so we can chat and be engaged. I don't post unless I am relatively confident that I can respond to comments, and comment on other people's posts, during the next half hour. That's why if you follow me on Instagram you'll notice that I've been quiet lately. I don't feel it's fair to post a picture and then walk away, so I haven't been posting all that frequently of late, since mornings have been quite busy).
7.30: The children play or read books while I go upstairs and make the beds, shower and dress, pick out clothes for them to wear, and water the upstairs plants if they need them (it's hot here right now and upstairs is like an oven, so they need watering almost daily).
8am: I get the children dressed, brush their teeth and my teeth, do Scout's hair, and hunt for their shoes (generally at least one of them has lost at least one shoe). We need to be out of the house by 8.20am on two of the three days. On Tuesdays, all of the above still has to happen, but we need to be out of the house by 7.30am at the absolute latest, so imagine everything occurring at double speed.
8.30am: Drop Ralph at kinder, settle him in, then walk Scout to school.
9am: Say goodbye to Scout at school, then walk home, picking up a coffee on the way to bring home, and sometimes checking the PO Box for mail.
9.30am: Finally I sit back down in front of my computer in the little windowless office. There are four core activities I do in my business. I always try to maintain a balance of these four in my week (preferably even in my day) because if I spend too much time on any one of these, or neglect any one of these, my business suffers.
1. COMMUNITY: That means responding to comments and emails from my students; responding to questions on Instagram; replying to other emails; and caring for the Me & Orla community (I am a TA/VA for Sara Tasker) by responding to comments and questions from her students. This is also when I'll work on questions, strategies and responses for the people I mentor on a one-to-one basis.
2. PRODUCTS: To make money in my business, I actually need to be constantly making things that I can sell. Writing courses, writing books, making colouring books, establishing master-mind groups, painting stationery designs for Boots Paper (I am the in-house illustrator for Boots), writing paid magazine articles, painting privately-commissioned pieces.
3. PROMOTION: By this I mean all the things I do to share my work and my business with my tribe. This blog, updates to my website, my newsletter, Instagram, unpaid magazine articles, magazine and podcast interviews, pitching story ideas to magazines, and guest blog posts. A lot of people have asked me to create video tutorials and this is definitely something I'd love to start doing, but (as you can see) I have a lot to fit into three half-days already, so we'll see!
4. RESEARCH & LEARNING: My business is less than five months old, and I started it without planning or strategy (I wrote about that here), so I have a LOT to learn. I listen to podcasts a lot because I can do that while I'm painting. I research and read material online, I read books, and recent courses I've done include two on Instagram with Sara Tasker, one on Pinterest with Melyssa Griffin, some smaller courses on selling without being sleazy with Jessica Lorimer, and I've joined the Soulful PR community with Janet Murray. I also booked a one-hour coaching call with Jen Carrington that helped give me a lot of clarity.
Depending on what is going on on that particular day, I prioritise COMMUNITY first, because I don't want people to wait too long to hear from me. Then the balance of PRODUCTS or PROMOTION will depend on what I have going on. For example right now I'm working on that "Time to Create" course I told you about, so I might prioritise that a little more heavily. When I'm ready to release it, or my book comes out, I'll move more into PROMOTION mode.
But to maintain some balance, I try to spread things out. I spent an hour on emails and comments this morning, now I'm writing this blog post. Afterwards, I'll dig back into writing the course. Last week, I spent the bulk of my time painting the artwork for the cover of my book, and the week before that I was editing the copy. Because of all those things, I've fallen behind on the promo side - this blog has been woefully neglected, as has Instagram. So I'll be working on redressing that balance soon.
I like to do my painting and drawing work in the afternoon. My brain is getting tired (remember I've been up since 5am!), so after lunch I'll sit down to paint, while listening to podcasts or audio books, so I can combine my PRODUCTS tasks with my RESEARCH & LEARNING tasks.
3.15pm: I leave home to pick up Scout from school, then we walk back together, just in time to pick up Ralph from kinder.
4.15pm: We all arrive home and the children have some afternoon tea. We sit at the table again, and pull out any homework that Scout might have (she is only five so it's just readers, and school is so new - we started at the beginning of Feb - that she still enjoys them).
While the children play, I clean up a bit. Clean the kitchen from meals cooked during the day (my grown-up step-daughter Em is living with us right now so there are several meals going on), empty and wash up lunch boxes, pick up clothes and toys that got scattered about that morning but which I didn't prioritise because I wanted to get straight to work, put on a load of washing, vacuum. Those kinds of things.
5pm: The children have either a bath or a shower. If they shower, I sit in my windowless office which is right next door, and answer any 'community' questions that have popped up since that morning. If they have a bath, upstairs, I use the time to respond to any comments or questions on Instagram while supervising them as they play. Or I fold the laundry.
5.30pm-6pm: Sometime around this point, the children have dinner. It's only light: normally salad with some kind of protein like tuna or ham or egg or cheese, followed by fruit. On school days they are never particularly hungry but are always exhausted so they just want to go to bed. Then we brush teeth, and go upstairs to read stories.
6.30pm-7pm: The children are in bed. I come back downstairs and clean the kitchen again after the children's dinner. Normally this is when I'd start to cook dinner for the grown-ups.
Lately though, we've been trying something different. I was finding I'd start cooking this late, so the food wouldn't be ready until 8pm, and often Mr B would then be in meetings or functions and so he wouldn't want to eat at all, and the food would be wasted (plus I'd be exhausted and then have to do even more washing up). Instead, we've started ordering "clean foods" meals from YouFoodz. I can see myself getting sick of them but right now, I like that they are fresh (not frozen), and come in recyclable containers so while not ideal, at least they don't go into landfill. I grab one and either eat it cold, pop it into the microwave, or stir-fry it on the stove-top. I miss cooking, but this certainly saves me at least an hour a night! Once my business gets through this intensive early-growth stage, I look forward to cooking again.
7.30pm: After dinner, I settle in to work. At this time of night I'm not at my best for crafting words or retaining research. Instead, I do most of my painting at this time. If I have PRODUCT work to do (painting for Boots, or a client, or my book etc), I do that. This is also when I create the templates and paint the samples for my newsletters. If I don't have painting to do, I use this time to write letters to people, edit photographs for Instagram, and make mail-art for the joy of it. If I'm painting or editing photographs my brain is mostly free, and Mr B and I like to binge-watch whatever our new favourite show is on Netflix while he signs thousands of letters. I do sometimes laugh at the incongruence of painting a beautiful, peaceful botanical illustration while people slaughter each other on Vikings, but that's just how I roll.
10.30pm-11pm: I do the final round of washing up (a lot less since YouFoodz), feed the cat and lock her up, hang up any wet washing from that load I put on earlier, and generally ready the house for the next day. If things are quiet I go to bed. If I'm busy or on a deadline, I can stay up much later, although I don't think I've worked past 1am more than a few times. After a few late nights, I'll often give up and go to bed earlier - about 9.30pm - to catch up. I have to be up again at 5am the next day, or 6am if I'm tired and need a sleep-in, to do it all again.
So... that's what my day looks like three days a week, give or take afternoon kid activities like ballet or karate or French lessons or swimming. On the other two week-days I have Ralph at home with me, so there are no big blocks of working time. I do my early-morning work, then after school drop-off he and I usually go out to the park or somewhere, but he goes down for a little nap after lunch and I work then. I prioritise COMMUNITY during that nap hour and then, if there is still time, I pick from either PRODUCT or PROMOTIONS, depending on what's on that week. After Ralph's nap we pick up Scout from school, and the afternoon progresses in pretty much the same way.
On the weekends, I'll still work in the early mornings, and again at night on painting, if we don't have to go out, and occasionally in the afternoons if the children have naps. But mostly, I try to make those days about family time. Because Mr B works such long hours, we prioritise the time that he is home to spend time together. Sometimes that has to involve cleaning the house, but we get out and about as much as we can on at least one of the weekend days.
One last thing...
I realise my hours are long, and not particularly sustainable. Please don't think I will be encouraging or expecting others to do the same things when I teach my Time to Create course. I'm at a point in my life where I'm building a brand-new business, and my time is extremely limited, so I'm squeezing every last morsel out of it. I don't intend to do this in the long term, and I don't expect anyone else to do this.
What I do love about my busy life right now is that I have, by trial and error, managed to block out specific times for specific things. For example, I'm not working while supervising the kids. I used to do that and I felt doubly guilty: guilty that I wasn't paying proper attention to my children, and guilty that I wasn't paying proper attention to my work. I don't look at social media while I'm with the kids (except when supervising bath times), nor do I answer (many) emails in front of them. I sit at that meal table and we chat, actively listening to one another, and making eye contact. Then when I sit down at my desk to work, I'm all about the work. My phone is on silent and often in a different room.
It's not perfect, but as someone who has freelanced for the better part of 15 years, I feel like I'm finally getting into some kind of workable rhythm, even while having small children around.
How about you? I'd love to know how you balance your work / family / fun time.
(Everybody sing together: "You can't hiiiiiiide / Your tired eyes....")
Botanical project: leaf skeletons (non toxic)
Whenever I discover a leaf skeleton in the garden it feels like a little piece of magic. Rare good luck, like finding a four leaf clover or seeing a double rainbow. The circumstances for nature to create a leaf skeleton have to be just right: damp enough for the fleshy parts of the leaf to decompose, sheltered enough (probably under other leaves) to encourage microscopic organisms to eat away at those leaves, and somehow exposed at just the right time for me to find the leaf while all those lovely veins are still in place, before it breaks or blows away.
I love to send leaf skeletons as gifts in my mail. They are something special, precious, a memento from my garden or a walk I've taken that is tinted with enchantment. But because they are so hard to find, I wanted to learn how to help nature along, and make my own leaf skeletons. Turns out there are several ways to do it, following processes that range from a couple of hours to a couple of weeks, and using everything from water and pantry ingredients to caustic substances requiring rubber gloves and goggles, and straight-up bleach.
I have tried three of the non-toxic methods, and am here to share them with you today.
Step 1: Pick & prepare the leaves
No matter what method you use, some steps to making leaf skeletons are always the same:
Choose your leaves: for best results, choose leaves that have a strong vein system. Tougher, more waxy leaves have better results than softer, younger leaves
Clean the leaves: gently rinse them in a bowl of water, and wipe any dirt or mud away with a soft cloth. If the dirt is stubborn, use an old toothbrush to (gently) scrape it away
Step 2: Choose your method
How you choose to make your leaf skeletons will depend on the time you have available, the materials you have in the cupboard, and how willing you are to work with potentially caustic substances. Here are the pros and cons of the three methods I'm sharing today. If you click on any of the methods below, you'll jump straight to the relevant instructions.
Pros:
* Completely safe
* Nature's method
* Gentle on leaves
Cons:
* Takes several weeks
* Gets gross and smelly
Pros:
* Completely safe
* Easy to find ingredients
* Relatively fast results
Cons:
* Can be rough on leaves
Pros:
* Supposedly faster
* The Internet loves this method (lots of tutorials)
Cons:
* Dangerously caustic
* Hard to find ingredients
* Can be rough on leaves
Step 3: Make your leaf skeletons
a) Water method
Take a shallow dish (like a baking dish) and fill it with water. The dish should be ceramic or glass, not metal (I don't know why. Maybe it's to avoid rust, or has something to do with the minerals or chemicals in metal?). Place the leaves in the dish (it's ok if they're on top of each other) and weigh them down with something heavy to ensure they stay covered with water.
Leave the water to sit for between three and four weeks. It will get murky, and start to smell really bad (like a vase when you've left cut flowers in it for too long).
Take one leaf out of the murky water, place it on a flat surface, and gently try to brush away the gunk and membrane from the leaf. Use an old toothbrush (softly), or a paint brush if you're worried the toothbrush will break the leaf. If it's too tough, put the leaf back into the water and give it a few more days to soak.
Rinse the leaf in clean water. If necessary, continue brushing away any remaining pieces of the pulp while it's in the water. Once you're done, lay it on a paper towel to dry.
b) Bicarb soda & baking powder method
Dissolve equal parts bicarbonate soda and baking powder in a saucepan of water. I used one tablespoon of each, and approximately a litre of water.
Place your leaves into the pot, and bring it to the boil. Reduce to a simmer, stirring it gently from time to time. The water will froth up, and will get brown and murky.
Watch the leaves until they have softened, and you think they are ready to clean away. This could take several hours (I was using hardenbergia leaves and it took about an hour and a half). If necessary, top up the water from time to time to ensure they leaves remain covered.
Take the leaves out of the saucepan and place them into a shallow tray of clean water. Using and old toothbrush, gently try to brush away the gunk and membrane from one leaf at a time. If the leaf is too fragile, use a paint brush instead of a toothbrush.
Once you're done, lay the leaf on a paper towel to dry.
c) Washing soda method
Note: washing soda is not the same as baking soda. Washing soda is sodium carbonate: it's a powerful cleaner and non-toxic, but is highly caustic and definitely not edible. Wear gloves and goggles while working with it, and try not to inhale any dust that might float up when you stir.
In a saucepan, dissolve 3/4 cup of washing soda in about one litre of water.
Place your leaves into the pot, and bring it to the boil. Reduce to a simmer, stirring it gently from time to time. The water will froth up, and will get brown and murky.
Watch the leaves until they have softened, and you think they are ready to clean away. This could take several hours (for some reason the camellia leaves I was using took forever - like about six hours - but general consensus on the Internet is up to two hours). If necessary, top up the water from time to time to ensure they leaves remain covered.
Take the leaves out of the saucepan and place them into a shallow tray of clean water. Using and old toothbrush, gently try to brush away the gunk and membrane from one leaf at a time. If the leaf is too fragile, use a paint brush instead of a toothbrush.
Once you're done, lay the leaf on a paper towel to dry.
How to make washing soda
If you can't find washing soda at the shops, try this easy at-home process.
Pre-heat your oven to 200C (400F). Spread two cups of baking soda evenly on a large baking tray, and place it in the hot oven for about half an hour. You'll know the transformation has happened when you look at the powder: washing soda is more grainy and dull than baking soda, and when you stir things around (not with you fingers!) you'll see it doesn't clump together. If you're not sure, grab some baking soda and put the two side by side, to see if they look different.
Step 4: Press the leaves
Leave cleaned leaf skeletons in a warm, sheltered place to dry for approximately one hour.
Once you are sure the leaf is completely dry, place it between two paper towels and store it under a heavy book until you are ready to use it.
Step 5: Decorate
I prefer to leave the leaf skeletons their natural colour, but you can absolutely play with other decorative ideas if you wish. After all the pulp has been removed but before you dry and press the leaf skeleton, you could place it in bleach to whiten it, or in food colouring. Alternatively, once dried and pressed, you could carefully paint the leaf skeleton (metallics look really great!).
That's it! If you decide to make these, let me know how you go. I'd love to see how they turned out, and learn what you think of the process.
ps. I've been working on a little video to show people how to make leaf skeletons using Method 2 (the baking powder and bicarbonate soda method), as part of a "botanical crafts" course I'm developing. The video is not finished yet but, in the meantime, I've created a printable tutorial using screen-grabs from the video to give you a more visual step-by-step guide, if you think that will help. You can download that tutorial here:
The Most Beautiful Letter You Have Ever Written
Come join me and a host of gentle, creative, like-minded people in my five-week letter-writing and mail-art course, delivered entirely online. This course is all about creativity, personal connections, and spreading joy to others through the old-fashioned postal service. Learn more or join in here.