I can't quite believe that this is the last weekly prompt for The Seasonal Sketchbook group. What a year!
I've started to look back through all of the prompts, albums and monthly worksheets to see what inspired and motivated during a year of masks, mayhem, 'eating out to help out', lockdowns, variants, U-turns, tiers, tears and daily briefings (this was a rather interesting reminder to look through. Matt Hancock, remember him? timeline-lockdown-social (instituteforgovernment.org.uk).
I've started to revisit my old sketchbooks; I've very nearly finished my second A4 one and have some little out-and-about ones on the go too.
January 2021 'Colour' Worksheet. (do you remember how interminably long January was? I felt like we all needed a little bit of colour)
It's really lovely to revisit work you have done over the last year; like poring over an old diary. Some of it may remind you of the seasonal changes: Shadows, A winter garden, Hanami. Other prompts or artwork might remind you of how you were feeling or what you were focusing on at the time. But what it all shows is a year's worth of your own creative reference material that you can dive into whenever you feel the need to be inspired.
A selection of work from my sketchbook
As I flick through my sketchbooks the thing that really surprises me is that I only missed a couple of prompts during the whole year! I enjoyed the discipline of visiting The Seasonal Sketchbook every week. It certainly helped me focus on doing something creative and purposeful. It also helped me feel connected at a time when that seemed really hard to achieve. I'm delighted to be back teaching face-to-face, but I will look back on this project very fondly as it brings me joy to see a year's worth of work, your comments and interactions, and where it has led me creatively and professionally.
Here's a collection of some of my paintings that were all born out of that work I did with The Seasonal Sketchbook. Thank you all so much for being part of it.
Beth
27th September 2021
