Hello and welcome to my newsletter about marking the seasons in the pages of my sketchbook.
Yesterday marked the solstice, which often by our calculations measures the ‘start’ of summer. However, I think I’m of this opinion that it is, indeed, midsummer - summer at its peak. This traditionally falls a few days after, according to older calendars, around the 24th of June. Even today, midsummer is paired with a host of holidays, such as the St. John’s day in the Christian tradition. In some countries, midsummer is a public holiday. For me and this microseason project, we are between the periods of Rising Summer and the Summer Solstice (see my note on Sekki here)
When considering what to name this most recent microseason, I consulted the British book of microseasons, Nature’s Calendar. The authors dedicated the past days to the ‘Rain soaked roses’. Of course there’s Burns’ poem as well, of his ‘Luve’ like a red rose newly sprung in June, so maybe it is a good time to dedicate to the roses, thought they are just a bit past their best now.
For someone who thinks of flowers very often, roses aren’t really a subject of interest - and a brief search through my phone showed me that I don’t really photograph them much either. While I have taken hundreds of pictures of flowers over the years, I’ve only taken five photos of roses. This leads me to think I might not be a huge fan of roses - it’s the cherry blossoms all over again!
Nevertheless, I decided to take a post-work trip to the gardens to draw the roses. I’ve taken a couple of these trips recently and have found it really restorative after a day of classrooms and computer screens.
Anyways, that’s enough about me and my unpopular opinions about flowers! Read on for some musings on artistic ‘style’..
Until next microseason!
Natalie
Sketchbook Notes
Here is a spread I created in my Pith Oroblanco, inspired by this photo from Unsplash.
Sometimes I struggle with feeling I lack an artistic style, or that I’m often going in different directions, artistically. Some of this, I reckon, is simply because it just needs time to develop. However, when I got to drawing this, I thought: ‘I’m trying something new’. But at the end, I feel that there are aspects of this that seem a bit like ‘me’ - the earthy colours, the cloudy aesthetic of coloured pencil and pastel on paint.