This Month's Gazette

| Issue 6 | Mar 2025 |

Helen C Stark

Mar 01, 2025

109

| Issue N6 | 1st March 2025 |

Hello MARCH!!!

Up here in the Northern Hemisphere, having survived the worst of the winter, March is a fantastic time to plan your 2025 year. With hints of sunshine and glimmers of hope, this is a great opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief and plan. Celebrate this new chapter!

Blooms for 2025

Plan your blooms!! If you haven’t planned your annuals for this year, now’s the time to choose, purchase and start planting on windowsills (or if you have a glasshouse). If you don’t have a garden or balcony, spend some time checking out parks and green spaces you’d like to visit this year. Also consider signing up for an allotment plot near you.

Jane Austen in 2025

Celebrate Jane Austen’s 250th birthday and look for “Austen 250” celebrations near you.

Jane Austen House is holding a number of festivals throughout 2025.
Chatsworth is celebrating Jane Austen from June 13–15, 2025, with talks, garden tours, and a live theatre production (also coincides with their 20th anniversary of Chatsworth becoming 'Pemberley' for Joe Wright's 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice). Regency dress is optional but encouraged.
Austen 250 in Bath - Bath has been a fabulous place to celebrate Jane Austen for years with their festival which this year will run Friday 12th to Sunday 21st September 2025. The full programme will soon be released HERE.

Books to order and read in 2025

Samantha Dion Baker’s new book Draw Your Adventures is out for pre-order now! She writes about it HERE.
Jo Thompson’s book, The New Romantic is a delightfully lush resource for garden imagery and is also available to purchase.
Katie Moody’s book Sketchbook Joy is available to pre-order now and promises to be a wonderful help for anyone wanting to sharpen their sketchbook skills!

Lettering Prompt

Challenge yourself to continue gathering wonderful examples of lettering when you are outing about. Create a photo album in your phone or add the image to Pinterest. This will come in very handy when we will need it in our visual journals as inspiration.

MONTHLY REPORT

Visual Journals in 2025

Thanks to all who came along to the 5 mini pop-in sessions earlier this year. All of these sessions are in the club archives. It’s been so delightful getting to know you and seeing many of you are continuing in February. Hopefully together we are de-mystifying visual journaling a little. Below are pictures of some work by people in the club. Do keep going and keep sharing your images in the club chat. It’s so wonderful to see everyone’s visual journaling.

Artwork by (in this order):

Stacie, Mary Ann, Meg

Amy, Sarah, Vivien

Tuesday 11th February - We decluttered paper bags. We quickly discussed what we aimed to achieve and came back together in the end to celebrate our achievements. A few of us were creating paper journals or scrapbooks after having organised our paper into bundles. It was a cozy time and some of us have a memory paper book where we’re sticking in colours and textures we love. This was recorded and is now in the club archives if you fancy watching it to help you get things done.

Friday 14th February - PARIS in WINTER - The co-drawing in February was with brilliant author and illustrator Samantha Dion Baker. Together we looked at seasonal images from Paris in Winter. We had a peek at some masterpieces before creating our own sketches based on our personal photography of Paris. Members had a great time and did some gorgeous artwork, though a few of us watched the replay to add details. Perhaps in future Zooms, we will have longer on at least one image towards the end.

Artwork by (in this order):

Stacie and Sharon, Vivien and Amy and Marilou

Monday 24th February 2:30pm - London Meet-Up

We had a club meet-up to sketch and chat at The British Museum in London. We hope to do this again in the summer.

PICK & MIX INSPIRATION

Inside Jane Austen’s House | Lucy Worsley on YouTube

Jane Austen at Home: A Biography by Lucy Worsley (An Audiobook Preview) | Lucy Worsley on YouTube

100 Years of Fashionable Womenswear: 1830’s-1930’s | V&A Museum on YouTube

What would your dream museum look like? | V&A Museum on YouTube

Poet’s Corner

Young Lambs

By John Clare

The spring is coming by a many signs;
The trays are up, the hedges broken down,
That fenced the haystack, and the remnant shines
Like some old antique fragment weathered brown.
And where suns peep, in every sheltered place,
The little early buttercups unfold
A glittering star or two--till many trace
The edges of the blackthorn clumps in gold.
And then a little lamb bolts up behind
The hill and wags his tail to meet the yoe,
And then another, sheltered from the wind,
Lies all his length as dead--and lets me go
Close bye and never stirs but baking lies,
With legs stretched out as though he could not rise.

DATES for MARCH

Friday 7th March 7pm : Co-Journaling Session, everyone will work on their own journals.
Friday 14th March 7pm : March Video - Helen’s latest completed Oroblanco Pith Sketchbook Tour and Front Cover Design Process
Monday 17th March 7pm : Co-Drawing St Patrick’s with the wonderful Charlotte Hamilton. Together we will draw a handful of images from beautiful Ireland, as well as people celebrating all things green around the world! This will start with a few faster paced warm ups, then several slow paced shots. Come dressed in green for a chance to win a special treat!
Tuesday 25th March 7pm : Co-Creating Session, we will continue what we started last month, as one session wasn’t enough. De-cluttering our studios and reorganising paper work, creating our little memory books or adding significant pieces of paper to our walls. This will be a chatty session throughout.
Note: All sessions are recorded and links to sign up for these will soon appear in the club chat, exclusive to paying members.

Teaching News

Some of you have asked if I’ll be teaching workshops soon, the Visual Wanderings retreat this September in Italy is the best place to get plenty one-to-one tuition. We’ll be sketching and filling up a sketchbook with so much loveliness. The retreat is now sold out but we would encourage you to sign up to the waiting list to be among the first to hear about any cancellations. I’m also considering a retreat in the UK at some point.