A new adventure
coming soon...
Welcome to this new adventure!
Thank you for being here! You have received this email because you have signed up for my monthly newsletters. These will keep coming to you with a very slightly different look and you will also be offered the possibility to join a creative community.
Why start this new creative adventure?
Launching in a new space like this can be daunting for many reasons. It’s like staring at a blank page in a new sketchbook. The best feeling and also pretty scary. I’ve learnt over the years to overcome that specific fear by gently just making a start and sometimes creating little boxes on the page can make it all more manageable. The parallel being waiting in little chunks - I will post regularly and in sustainable regularity and will celebrate little milestones and victories as we go along. I was brought here thanks to friends on Instagram who recommended the platform for stronger sense of community. I believe this could be a fantastic way to grow my own practice AND dive deeper into the creative process together.
A while back I made this poster for my studio. It has some of my recurrent themes, the ones I am most passionate about. Always with in mind to cultivate a sense of thankfulness through visual journaling, my passions revolve around the seasons, British wildlife, picture books, foraging (and recipes), gardening, the second life of things. My family heritage is Irish, French, Scottish and I live in England. I am a Christian and am interested in matters of the heart, I value wise words and poetry.
Why now? After having developed my creative voice over the last decade and shared my work and sketchbooks on my website and Instagram, I’m now inspired to start this new chapter. I’m now in my 40’s and at crossroads in my life, having had 3 kids who are now getting a little more independent, I also want to develop my portfolio with a view to continue illustration and develop a more consistent journaling practice.
Thankful hearts
With a little time to play and experiment this December, trying out the possibilities the platform offers, my goal is to hibernate a little and consider what I can realistically create and share come the new year.
I would love for this community to be helping each other to look at the beauty around us and to support each other in telling our stories through visual journaling. From January 2024 my free newsletter will continue to come out on the first of each month. My hope is to decide by the end of December what I can offer for my paid subscribers. Ideas which come to mind are one heritage video per month (I will clarify what this includes), one invitation to join one live and recorded Zoom creative call per month. I’m also considering creative prompts, behind the scenes studio video tours, sketchbook tours, co-working calls, process videos as well as thoughts and feeling about being a self-taught artist and mother.
A personal manifesto
I hope to come up with a name for this group and hope to develop a clear personal manifesto to share with you and hang on my studio wall. In the meantime, have a lovely November.
Helen x
I think that story might be called 'The Princess and the Golden Ball'!!