Joy in Pandemic times – Scotland is getting ready for Winter

Autumn is almost gone.

Leaves from trees are slowly changing into mush-mash of wet slippery cover on the path walks and trees appear to be more and more naked. I guess I am ready for winter as well.

Tiredness is most present every day, as my body would like to tell me to slow down, reflect.

I have been very busy lately, trying to balance all present in my life. I enjoy all, but I am learning to do just as much I can in a day.

Pandemic times don´t add much.

Do you find yourself sometimes creatively drained?

I do. Days even months of not picking up the pencil. Is it for us to push through or just let it go itself? In my own experience the answer is somewhere in the middle.

My creativity heightened lately and I made myself a promise of drawing every day for one month. It is not easy task to accomplish and as I am writing this story I have already slipped few days trying to catch up now.

Have you ever heard of Ink October Challenge? I am doing it now in November. Hoping to continue on everyday quick sketches even after the challenge. That is for another story though.

As I look out of my window weather is less promising every day. Yet we had quite few beautiful days even little inversion, which I am hoping to experience again. Edinburgh covered in cloud, one suddenly felt as being in the part of Harry Potter Books or Sherlock Holmes stories.

Picking up leaves on the way home, creating fall inside of the flat. Enjoying times with friends. Experiencing that even in times as we live at now there is still a lot to see and experience. I guess we learnt to live with virus, there are restrictions present in the past half of the year and I only can conclude that this time brought a lot of positives into my life as well.

Nature become more important than ever, appreciating every new day being healthy, every meeting with friends. Being grateful for the job I have which allows me get away from not only isolation, but as well away from the fear of the virus, which many experience nowadays.

But enough of talking, let me show you little things which make life so special even in times of pandemics.

What is it you enjoy at the moment?  What makes you happy?

Mushroom picking – there is inspiration in simple things

Not long ago I was trying to capture our herbs picking with my family. The same day we went for mushroom picking, which wasn´t that successful 😀

Yet it was an amazing day outside in the forests very dear to me. I have seen my first deer running through the path at the early morning here, when all I could hear was stamping noise. I learnt here to recognise which mushrooms are good to eat and which ones are better left behind.

As a child I was aware of beauty surrounding me and felt that nature and forests are these magical places where everything is possible and everything is somehow beautiful. That´s not what always nature is though. It has its way to teach us often difficult and challenging bits about life and what does it mean to be a human as well.

After years coming back felt as a pathway to past memories which rushed through my head as we walked. Again I wanted to capture this old memory and this present moment which possibly could be source of inspiration for finding beauty in simple things for someone else.

I don´t know about you, but I just love walking through any kind of the forest, especially when it is nice and easy to walk around and ground is covered in fresh grass. That was exactly how morning would welcome us fresh dew on the grass and smell of the forest in the air.

As we entered the forest we were lucky to find a mushroom and it gave us hope for a successful day, but unfortunately few more we found and that was all for that day.

It hasn´t disappointed me though, because I again found some inspiration inside in between those trees.

Small things came my way as fallen bird nest, colourful bug trying to get his way or deer running in the distance. It was a time when I have started recording small bits of these beautiful moments and thinking about the way how could I capture the feeling and the memory I got here. I guess it was the beginning of my video editing journey as a way to be creative yet make sense of the experience as well.

Everything is always happening for its reason, so the fact we haven´t found any mushrooms that day had its purpose as well.

That was a special day spent with my parents, remembering times we used to go there when I was a child. Admiring hard work of ants who tried to steal every small bit of our sandwiches which fell on the ground and creating new memories together to hold on for later when we will be apart once again.

People sometimes ask and wander why would I live so far away. Maybe there will come a time I will feel a need to move closer but so far the fact not being close taught all of us to value even more greatly than before our relationship which is certainly valuable lesson having.

I hope and believe there will come a time that I will be allowed spend maybe more time with them but not losing the life here in order to do so.

Come with me then for this little poetic forest walk which can maybe inspire you as well to find your own inspiration in small things life have to offer.   

Fairy Hunt

When I moved here what I was most taken by were stories about mythical creatures and fairies srill fairly lalive among the people. They are very proud for this heritage which I find fascinating and somewhat similar to my own culture where many fairy tales about mythical creatures still live among the people. Maybe not in such extend as here yet I remember stories to be told as a child or attending events and festivities closely connected with old traditions.

With all this mythical knowledge once you see the beautiful nature here or wherever else there you can let your imagination go and meet fairy behind the trees.

I have few stories of my own while frowing up. There used to be a tree close to my parent’s field. I spent hours talking to it and back then I believed it is talking back to me. Sounds crazy right? Yet I don´t think it was that crazy at all, because as much I learnt there are different parts of our personalities and probably this one was one of them projected by my ´child me´ into a tree. I gave her even a name – Agatha. It certainly was my good wise fairy always providing comfort and good advice.

My mum taught me hug trees when I was little, because they carry beautiful energy from the source. Every time we would go to the forest she would hug trees I would follow until I entered ´cool´ age and found that to be somewhat crazy. I am realizing just now how much these small rituals meant and how they created my strong connection to life, nature and everything alive.

Walking through a beautiful forest thinking that there are tiny creatures protecting its beauty gives me joy and reassurance that not all is lost yet that nature will always find a way. Little painting I did here inspired by nature was very free flow illustration of possible worries and yet freedom of the fairies. It´s more of a study then final piece yet I enjoyed every second of the painting. Come with me for a little fairy hunt today.

Do you have any fairy stories of your own? I would be happy to hear 🙂

Scotland – artists inspiration

Sometimes we happen to be in place we haven´t maybe even indented to be. Once a friend told me that Edinburgh or even Scotland is calling its people. I have heard so many stories of people who happened to come to Edinburgh not knowing why they came just they felt that´s the place they need to go to.

I haven´t really intended coming here it was more of an only option back then and I would probably choose completely different destination, but life made it the way that I appeared here. Slowly I have started to understand that this is a place where I am going to be for quite some time and that it will mean a lot to me.

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I often wondered why Edinburgh, why Scotland as either was a place I would ever see myself belonging. Yet it happened to be right place for my upcoming path which grew tall in my heart and became my second home. I even learned that I must have lived here before (if you believe in past lives). It feels as I have already lived a lifetime looking back to over a decade of my adult life. So many experiences and so many things shaped who I am today.

Here I found sanctuary, safe place to find my true calling but as well a lot of pain and heartbreak. Here I experienced the wildest emotional shifts to face almost every single bit of my personality bits I didn’t want to face or would of like. That is part of the journey though isn´t it? Without everything we experience we wouldn´t be who we are today.

It took me years to find confidence and understand that art is the only path I can take, only title I am comfortable with and only thing I would truly like to keep throughout my life. I can do and probably will do many other jobs but even if it´s meant to be for sake of taking out things which inspired me and they won´t go nowhere else than on this blog that is enough and I feel as I followed that inner calling.

Today I am on artistic journey.

The place where I live is full of inspiration which I just would love to take in and out for others to enjoy. In reality every place is full of inspiration and as long I can remember I could always see it everywhere. I still don´t always know how to take it out but that´s the beauty of the process.

I live in the city yet I am mostly inspired by nature. There is no option for me at the moment to live anywhere else or closer to the nature where I hear my true calling, so rather than soak myself in the pity of it, I have decided to take inspiration from where I am at. By slow baby steps I am getting closer.

Apart of painting and drawing I have started creating videos about my inspiration not only for art but to live creative life because I believe we all are artists in some way we just need to allow ourselves to see it within us.

It is only a beginning of things which inspire me here in Scotland but I tried to grasp a tiny bit. I am still learning to really understand video making and the technology I have doesn´t allow me to truly make it the way I´d like it to be, but baby steps.

Let me bring you small part of the beauty I see and was blessed to enjoy.

Artists inspiration during midsummer day 2020

It is not long from midsummer day. Every year even if I forget it somehow comes to my awareness. This year wasn´t different.

I was moving flat which took a lot of my attention. Around 24st of June I started to be fulfilled with this new strange energy. It is every year around this time I feel as everything renew itself.

I moved a flat so obviously things started to be new I basically am starting over, but there was something else into it. I felt this deep connection to something inside of me.

Forgotten.

As I was looking for few things into the flat I don´t even know how suddenly I ended up on the e-shop of one talented artist. She creats these beautiful symbolic goddesses and seeing those pictures I just fell in love.

IMG_9163There was so much symbolism which just was so deeply talking to me connecting with this part of me I have forgotten about. Each goddess would represent certain aspect of mostly womanhood.

I spent hours just reading about them and connecting with this mythical symbolism.

At the end I ended up ordering few pictures after thorough consideration which ones are for me. Those pictures just created certain frame in which I finally saw myself and woman in general. I felt a wave of inspiration a hope that these little women who got such a huge responsibility to carry human’s desires and dreams, bringing them to their own self will remind me of my own path. Journey towards never ending inspiration and understanding which is deep inside of each of us.

Once again I heard calling of the nature because not only one goddess was connected to nature and wild animals. This calling is deep and different to anything I have ever experienced before.

Art (in different forms) and nature.

Only two things which made complete sense throughout my whole life. Every midsummer day directly or no directly is reminding me of this calling so strongly that is impossible not to listen.

So I created this little video about goddesses which came into my life during midsummer time of 2020. Enjoy! 🙂

 

How to boost creative process?

Recently I came across with interesting advice (precisely it was at the channel of this guy), which is ´draw the same thing every day for one year´

It felt resonating. Go have a look for the close explanation, but basically what you need to do is pick one object and draw it every day. Not only your technique will improve this way, but your brain gets used to inspirational process.

Why only one?

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Colony of Artists

Have you ever seen that kind of community where people know each other? The community which almost have a magical atmosphere full of creativity? Community where people just love to share ideas and create something together?

Maybe you are lucky enough to live in such place but for rest of us it is something seen only in movies or fairy tales. Today I was lucky enough to see such community just few streets away from me.

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