Spring Update 2024

Wow, what a start to the year! I can't believe it's April already and the first quarter of the year is over!

In this post, I'm going to give you a little round up of what I've been up to for the beginning of the year and some updates for the Spring and Summer time.

I started the year being intentionally slow. I have always tried to bulldoze my way into the start of the year, never satisfied when I'm not productive enough or achieving anything straight away. I blame the embedded 'new years resolutions' in our society that creates this impression that you have to start straight away after Christmas and New Year's and you have to start this on January 1st or you are already failing. They are often unsustainable to keep going long term and it makes us feel bad when we fail.

In reality, Winter is a time for rest, recuperation and preparing for the busy spring and summer months. This is what nature tells us we should be doing - everything lies dormant during these months, conserving their energies while times are hard and we should be too. I was really inspired by the book Wintering by Katherine May, which was the first book I read this year. It encourages us all to recognise our own Winters and when we need to rest and not get caught up in the business of everyone else's lives, to be self aware of these times when they are approaching and to not fight them when they arrive.

So I made the decision before New Year's to take January off from my illustration practice, to conserve my creative energies for when I would need them later in the year and to rest my creative brain so I can dream up of some new inspirations. In reality, this only lasted a couple of weeks before I was itching to create some new work, but what I did create was completely without pressure, just for pure enjoyment and with no expectations to form anything from the work that I did create. Turns out this was exactly what I needed as I created the below works in a manner of weeks and I am really proud of them.

These works were all inspired by lyrics or phrases that have influenced me in some form. Whether it is the story behind them or the emotions they stir in me, they have all played a part in bringing comfort of some kind. These works are now all available as prints or greetings cards on my Etsy shop.

Then February came along and those creative juices had to stop flowing as much due to a very busy month with social engagements and lots of work for my day job. But during this time, I chose to share with the world a print I had created before Christmas, as a present to my lovely nephew. I wanted to create an animal alphabet print for ages and this was the perfect excuse - so I actually spent most of November drawing up these animal letters for the print. This print can be found on my Etsy shop now and the individual letters will be arriving on there soon too!

During this slower creative time, I have focussed a bit more on embracing my silly side by creating funny doodles that I'm just having fun with. Something about this change in process, to focus on the slightly ridiculous side of my personality, feels so authentic to me as a person and I have enjoyed being true to who I am as an illustrator. It's something to expect more of for sure.

The final update I have for this quarter is some very exciting projects! I have been painting a sculpture that is a Castle Tower for Castles in the Sky - a sculpture trail in collaboration with Wild In Art held in Swansea. This trail is all in aid of Wales Air Ambulance and will be shown around Swansea for 10 weeks between July and September this year. You can see some highlights of me starting the sculpture over on my Instagram page and I will show updates on my Summer blog post as well.

I hope you've all enjoyed this little update of what I have been working on. If you want to get more frequent updates then please make sure to follow me on my social media pages and to subscribe to my newsletters as well!

Love, Rachel x