Spring

Well hello there, it’s been a while! I hope you’re all keeping well and are looking forward to the Spring (if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere that is!). Rather than spend time making excuses for my rather long gap from blogging (everything’s fine, it’s just been busy times) I thought I’d do a little update of what’s going on with Owlstation right now.

Aside from client work, which I’m glad to say is ticking over nicely, I’ve been focussing on building my new portfolio website. It’s so nearly there!! And it’s been quite the learning curve, creating and building it all myself on WordPress using Elementor. It has also taken TIME – lots of it. I must confess I am very eager for it to be finished so I can get back to working on new products for the Owlstation Store, developing my creative skills, personal projects and blogging here of course! I want to make drawings again and get lost in art. Hopefully I’m just a few bug fixes away, though it is hard to tell when you don’t really know what you’re doing!

I’ve managed a few outdoor drawing sessions recently, which I’ve been better at documenting on my Instagram page. I’ll try to upload some of those here soon, and am definitely hoping to do more in 2023. A piece of work I was especially pleased with recently, was my Forest Guardian illustration. You might remember that a while back that I’d shared some character sketches for ‘forest guardian’ concepts. My plan was to hone in on a character and then illustrate a forest to drop them into (so that they could guard it). I used Crayola felt tips, oil pastels and coloured pencils to sketch a forest inspired by the Japanese Island of Yakushima. An incredible primeval forest covered in moss.

I thought the bright colours would make this a good image to share for this Spring update post. As where I am, the flowers are starting to show their heads, the evenings are getting that bit lighter and it’s even warmed up a little. Any signs of Spring where you are? Or if you’re heading into Autumn perhaps you’re enjoying the first blaze of colours. Either way, it’s nice to be back with you again! 🙂

Forest Experiment

I was having fun a little while back developing my ‘Forest Guardian’ mini project. There’s more that I want to do here, including working with the little blue forest guardian that you all helped me pick out over on Instagram…but here’s a little sneak peek for now from one of my test drawings. My main aim was to just be as expressive and playful as possible and just revel in drawing a forest.

In all honesty though, I’ve found it difficult to be in the mood to create over the last few weeks with everything that’s going on in the world. I find it tricky to engage with making when my heart is feeling heavy and things feel so uncertain. I know that’s the way of it sometimes though and it will come back when it’s ready and of course it’s no hardship. For now, I know it’s important to remember that there’s always hope, however small. Sending love and hope to you all in these strange and scary times x