January Blues
And Some Winter Sketches ❄️
Hi friends,
I don’t know what it is about January: whether it’s just post-holiday let down or it’s truly Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.), but the Monday of Months is always predictably low and slow for me. Don’t know about you guys. It’s never an easy month.
Thankfully, I’ve been around the bend enough times now to know that instead of panicking, I can know this period passes. It always does.
It’s a bit like going into hibernation anyway, winter. Right? Why do we start our year, with all our big New Year’s resolutions, goals and aspirations for a new year, new us, better diet, new commitments - right as the sun is disappearing and the air grows cold and hostile? 😅 I think the bears have always kind of had the right idea. Can’t we start our year in Spring?
All that to say that here I am, sending January’s newsletter in February (I will still write February’s) – and I’m just going to be real about it. You can picture the bear on the cover of that SleepyTime Tea box as pretty much where I’ve been the last month - dealing with a bit of sadness, honestly - both personally, and globally - but doing it all with a nice cup of something hot, thankful to be surrounded by my loved ones, and pretty much working from my pajamas the whole way through. ☕️
Art, however, and as always, and always and always and always - provides therapy like nothing else will. One thing that I’ve discovered this winter, is how much I truly love drawing and painting scenes appropriate to the season.
I’d always heard snow was kind of difficult to paint, etc. Absence of color, but not really being white either, etc. But honestly, I haven’t really found that to be so. I’m no expert, of course - and I’m still in my learning phase of watercolor sketching - but I’ve found wintery forest scenes to be one of my favorite subjects I’ve ever drawn.
These scenes make me feel calm, and the relative absence of color saturation has actually made for a pretty good entryway for me trying to learn color mixing - though, as you can see, at least half or more of my sketches are still what I consider monochromatic values studies. Point being, nevertheless, simplicity. Winter is absence. Absence of noise. Absence of striving. Absence of movement. Absence of complexity.
But the light. That beautiful, diffused light, softly multiplied off every inch of snow in every direction so that the world glows and glistens in that magic way no other time of year matches. It takes ones breath away.
“and then the snow, like silence coming from the sky…” – Louise Glück
Can you hear the silence, too? Can you feel the earth asleep beneath your feet? It is at rest, and generating anew, preparing for a new birth in the glorious springtime. Steadily, quietly, with dignity. And so will I.
Thanks for reading. I’m so glad you are here.
- K