Bringing The Forest Home

‍ ‍ ‍My little travel sketchbook and travel watercolour set, in The Black Forest, Germany

On Confirmation, Travelling, and Filling the ‘Artist’s Well’

“It feels like we have been away for a month!” I said to my husband when we returned safely from our European road trip last Wednesday. Twelve days in total, 1600 miles covered in Myrtle (our trusty horse – courtesy of BMW!).

From Dover to Calais, Saint Quentin to Colmar, to the Black Forest. Then a return trip back up through Germany to Saarburg, through Luxembourg to Bruges in Belgium, before heading to Dunkirk for the boat back to Dover.

The travelling has felt new in many ways. We have never done such a road trip before. We have been fortunate to experience previous holidays which were all inclusive, usually next to a pool or beach in a hot climate – fantastic holidays, but quite different.

It has felt like an absolute privilege to see new places, experience new towns and immerse ourselves in new landscapes and languages.

I went away with a sketchbook in my pocket, with visions of sitting among the trees, paints beside me, capturing tons of little moments of what I saw.

Truth is, I opened the sketchbook once the whole trip!

I made a few marks with a travel watercolour set and honestly, didn’t particularly like them!

The funny thing is, I didn’t particularly enjoy making them either! I really loved being in the forest, but the little voice in my head that said ‘you should be sketching’ made it feel like something I was supposed to be doing.

We had walked up into the Black Forest from our little village that was our main base for the week. After a long, hot hill, we found a clearing by some log piles where there was a little bench. The 25 degrees-plus heat reminding us that here, summer was far from being over. We got our water bottles out and sat to soak up the forest.

It was there, while we took a break, that I got my sketchbook out.

I did a little doodle of what I thought was a little birdwatching hide. They were appearing everywhere around the forest. It turns out they are Hochsitz, meaning ‘high seat’, usually used by hunters. My initial vision of a little German birdwatcher with binoculars then changed somewhat!

After a short time, the sketchbook got closed. I ticked it off in my head as having made a start.

Instead, the camera became my sketchbook.

Taking photographs. Lots of photographs. Quite possibly a very excessive amount of photographs… There was so much to capture though, everywhere I looked - light, shadows, form, details and colours. Photographing everything became a little obsessive! It felt like I wanted to capture absolutely everything I could from each moment in the different landscapes, so I could re-live it again once we were home.

I ended up with a photographic sketchbook.

Following my last post about my Nannie Libs and her way of looking, I was inspired to take my sketchbook thinking, right! I’m ready to do the same, just like I used to do, many moons ago! But as it turned out, it was opened only once.

The experience left me thinking about what really counts as a record of looking.

Is it only a pencil line, or can it be a few watercolour marks with a brush? A photograph of moss because there was such variety? Or the millions of photographs of trees because the light kept changing? The sound of the wind in the trees and distant birds, like the woodpecker, recorded so I could keep it?

What if noticing doesn’t have to look the way we expect it to look?

Whilst we were away, I started to write a travel journal, capturing our experiences and encounters each day, sights, smells and sentimental moments! I seemed to run out of time during the travelling, so ensured I filled it in when we got home as I’m sure it will be a source of joy to look back on one day.

A gift to our future selves so we can re-live some of the details we might otherwise forget!

I also love that whilst I’m looking forward to reigniting my relationship with sketchbooks again, I realised that sometimes the thing we think we are supposed to be doing can get in the way of actually seeing. The method matters less than the noticing!

I think the biggest thing the trip confirmed for me is that I don’t need to learn how to notice; I already do! I just needed to give myself the freedom to look in the way that feels natural to me. It felt much freer on this trip to capture everything with the camera and my written word, knowing that the play with the paint will certainly follow later!

Not only did the adventure allow me to practise my way of seeing – colour, light, composition, textures and nature – it also gave us incredible cathedrals, butterfly and chocolate museums, galleries, many waterfalls – some cascading through little German towns – wine festivals, the sound of ancient church bells ringing over gothic architecture, tasting French, German and Belgian beers, Schnitzels, Black Forest Gateaux, Flemish stews, waffles and of course, Belgian chocolate!

But ultimately, it gave us quality time together to explore the world a little further.

Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way, talks about the idea of ‘filling the well’. Her idea is that creativity needs to be replenished; we can’t continually draw from the well without taking time to fill it again.

She introduces the idea of ‘Artist Dates’ which involve deliberately taking yourself somewhere, or doing something, that gives you experiences which feed your creative imagination. They don’t have to be grand or expensive, it might be a walk in nature, visiting a gallery or museum, exploring somewhere new, or even looking at the place where you live through the eyes of a tourist for an afternoon.

Knowing that I was on an ‘Artist’s Date Road Trip’ meant I could simply enjoy it, with no pressure of thinking, I need to find inspiration for the next collection. Instead, I could be fully present in the experiences themselves, knowing that somehow, in ways I couldn’t yet know, I was absorbing them. The Black Forest, the waterfalls, the galleries, the architecture, the food, the sounds, the colours, all of it was going into the well!

But the important thing is that ‘filling the well’ doesn’t have to mean travelling 1600 miles across Europe. It could be taking the long way home and noticing something you’ve never noticed before. It could be sitting under a tree for just half an hour with no particular purpose. It could be visiting somewhere you’ve lived near for years, but never actually explored. It could be going to a museum you’ve walked past a hundred times.

Or it could simply be allowing yourself to be curious again.

I didn’t come home with a full sketchbook, but I did certainly come home with my well a little fuller.

And now I’m looking forward to seeing what may be created from it!

Have you made a little time to ‘fill your well’ lately? And if not, what might fill it for you?

Until next Sunday…

🌿 May you find inspiration in nature this week.

Tracey Anne x