Tag: Motivation
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Plant Families: Sneak Peek at Wendy’s Newest Compositions
The more I draw botanicals, the more I learn about plants, and the more I learn about plants, the more I love botanical drawing! I hope you feel the same endless cycle of joy 🙂 Drawing plants is a delightful opportunity to get to know them closely and detect repeated patterns. A pattern that … Continued
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Practice Makes Progress
If you learned to ride a bike, you most likely didn’t learn it all at once. You probably learned by riding your bike over and over and over. In the beginning, you may have struggled to maintain balance and survived a few falls along the way, but after getting back on your bike again and … Continued
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Brighten the world with your creations
The next time you are finishing up a drawing, put your pencils and paintbrushes down. Admire your page, and take a few deep breaths. Inhale joy, exhale frustration. Inhale peace, exhale stress. Inhale positivity, exhale negativity. Your mind may wonder if you are accurately representing your subject, or notice areas you want to improve. … Continued
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Practice Becoming a Beginner (Again)
The wonder and amazement we feel as children stems from discovering the world for the first time. Children are remarkably inquisitive, asking what, why, and how everything works, in an attempt to gain knowledge and understanding of their world. This openness and wonder is often referred to as the “beginner’s mind.” The next time you … Continued
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Listen... with your eyes
As artists, we are all familiar with the feeling of overwhelm that arises upon first look at a subject beside the vastness of a blank page. How will we capture the innate beauty that we see before us? Before you start drawing, take a moment to observe, absorb, and process the sensory information you’re receiving … Continued
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Receiving nature's gifts and giving back
The living world provides us with so much – oxygen, beauty, nutrition, inspiration… what can we, as botanical artists, give in return? Our gift is our time, our focused attention, our love. There is a reason that advertisers vie for our attention: they know that our time is our most valuable asset. Making the conscious … Continued
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Notice subtle changes in nature as the seasons progress
Consider breaking free from the news cycle and tuning in to the subtleties of nature. Walk outside your door, and notice small changes in the environment around you. Is the grass a little greener? Duller? Did a familiar plant just start to flower? Are there new seeds or pods along the ground? When you are … Continued
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Practice Patience
Breathe Think for a moment about the timeline of nature. Imagine any natural process – seed growth, blooming flowers, decomposition. Do they happen quickly? Â Imagine a colorful autumn leaf floating down from its branch and settling in with its siblings on the ground. I like to imagine that this leaf is not in … Continued
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Warm up and have fun!
When we are deep in concentration, working really hard on a drawing, we may reach a point where our bodies don’t want to continue. If we’ve trained our muscles (built our “loose joints”), we can let our bodies take over for the final sprint. Try doing some warm-up exercises to click back in. Botanical drawing … Continued
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Let your specimen amaze you
During the creation of a botanical drawing, so much of the joy is exploring, investigating, and letting the wonder of nature wash over you. Often this type of drawing can feel overwhelming, slow, never-ending… Bring your attention away from those fears and take the time to find the wonder in your specimen. What amazes you? … Continued