Creative explorations Vol #32: Spring
A sketchbook/art journal prompt to support your art and creative practice.
Creative Explorations are themed around a prompt that you can explore in your own art/creative practice over the coming weeks. Prompts will be sent out on the first Friday of every month. I hope this month’s prompt sparks your creativity!
Spring has sprung in my corner of the world. The flowers are blooming, the bees and wasps are flying around in search of quiet spots where they can make their nests. The resident squirrels have made a nest in a corner of my husband’s woodworking workshop — though now that they’ve seen us poking around there, they may decide to move to a quieter, less threatening spot.
With so much life unfolding around us after a short but intense winter, I feel like a little spring energy is in order. So that’s what we are exploring in our sketchbooks this month. Let’s get started!
Resources + ideas
Plant prints: Collect some flowers, leaves, and stems from your backyard, flower pots, or even from a bunch of store-bought flowers and make some prints. Experiment with stamping, using nature elements as brushes to make some organic, unexpected marks. You could do this in your sketchbook itself, or experiment on some papers and create some collage papers that you can pull into your sketchbooks throughout the year.
Eco dyeing: With so many flowers blooming all around, try your hand at some eco dyeing. Collect some flowers and leaves, bundle them up between papers and fabrics, and let nature surprise you! If you’ve never tried eco dyeing before, this video offers some tips.
Honeycomb: Mimic the bees in your sketchbook by drawing or stenciling a honeycomb pattern and making that the hero of your composition. If you happen to find an abandoned wasp nest {I have one from last year that I haven’t gotten around to trying out yet!}, you can try stamping or making some marks with it too!
Florals: What’s spring without flowers? Try drawing some flowers from life — observe the shapes and the shadows and create your own tiny spring bouquet in your sketchbook! I had shared a lot of ideas and resources around incorporating florals in Creative explorations Vol #9.
Spring colors: Go outside with your camera and capture some spring blooms. Then use those photographs to come up with a spring inspired color palette!
Macro: Try your hand at macro photography. I’ve always loved getting up close and personal with flowers…the details that you can capture are stunning! It was admittedly much easier to take some truly amazing macro photographs when I had a DSLR, but my phone camera works rather well too. I can’t get “true” macros with it of course, but I can get pretty close to those gorgeous blooms and capture some stunning images.
I look forward to seeing your take on this prompt! You can share your pages on Substack Notes and tag me, or email your finished pieces to me on shinjinim@substack.com. If you prefer to share on Instagram, you can DM or tag me there @moderngypsy.in
Like this prompt? Share it with your friends and invite them into our virtual studio. If you’re on the Substack app, you can tap on the like button or restack to Notes to let me know you enjoyed this post.