Simply Draw & Paint it
Hi !
Here I share my thoughts about living a creative life, about how I found more and more fun and joy in making art and looking for creativity by getting rid of my demons like fear, perfectionism, what-might-other-people-think, ugliness (what’s that anyway?), Art with a big A, dogma’s …. Everybody is an artist and everybody is creative!
Please feel free to share your story in the comments in my posts! I read all the comments and I would love to hear from you!
Tell me your story here: info @ barbaraluel.com
Capturing the moment in your sketchbook
This is a very special "post confinement" summer... 2021 will be remembered. I just came back from the magical île de la Réunion where I was invited to give 6 workshops at the travel sketchbook festival "Festival Embarquement immédiat" and it was very emotional for...
Preparing for a creative Summer
I’m finally preparing for summer ! The sun has come to Brussels, birds are singing, the confinement is ending here and we’re meeting again with urbansketchers to go sketching outside together. Restaurants and terraces have opened and most of us are vaccinated now…. Everything is going to be all right !
Afraid to ruin my sketchbook !
I got this great question from Neha yesterday on Instagram that made my heart jump because I still feel it sometimes as well: “I have this terrible issue with not being able to paint or sketch because I find my sketchbooks too precious.... I know I need to stop this,...
Take time to play
I've written about this before... "Take time to play"! But I insist, because it's sooooo important to grow your drawing and painting skills. Because when we take ourselves too seriously and we stop playing, we end up doing always the same thing, creating always the...
Mix yourself all shades of pink !
In my previous blogpost I was talking about my spring pocket palettes, and about my pink pocket palette.
The pink watercolor tubes I bought to make that palette are not all available any more. Some beautiful Holbein pinks I bought in Japan are sold out.
Celebrate the beauty of spring
Spring is always an exciting time, with the cherry blossoms and the magnolia’s blooming.
Part of the excitement is the Fear of Missing Out, because I know it doesn’t last long! Cherry blossoms, an ephemeral symbol of renewal…
A creative habit
One year has gone by.
I’ve been thinking about past pandemic year, with all exacerbated emotions, very much lows, and very much highs… a lot of emotions and stress and tension, both at home and at work.
For some of us, quarantine was a time of renewed creative energy, and for others, it was a necessary pause from a busy pre-pandemic life and a busy new pandemic life with all organisation of daily life upside down. How is this one year milestone is affecting you?
Skills versus talent
What if talent isn’t nearly as important as skill? Are there creators who have made up for lack of magical talent by earning a skill instead?
What skills would transform your work?
Does anyone else have that skill?
Do you care enough to learn it? What would it require for you to gain the skill you need?
Layers of looking and playing
I hope you’re going well in this first month of 2021?
I want to share some creative inspiration with you, to get you going and make the best out of this year !
First of all I want to talk about Ian Fennelly’s book that was published at the end of 2020 by Studio 51 Boutique.
As you probably know if you already took a workshop with him: Ian is a very generous teacher, and this is a very generous book in which he shares his creative process with a lot of details, loads of images and beautiful descriptions.
“Happy new year” ?
“Happy new year” is a bit difficult to say today, with these Covid problems which are not over yet… but what else can we say? I wish you the best new year possible, a beautiful and a healthy new year ! A new year full of love, friendship and beauty !
Online drawing and painting course
My online course is on Skillshare!
The magic of the creative process
“The magic of the creative process is that there is no magic. Start where you are. Don’t stop”
[Seth Godin]
I’m reading Seth Godin’s new book “The Practice” and I want to share some of his wisdom with you, because it talks about a comment I hear often.
Choose Joy
Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity pulling the stream down its course
the worst critic
How do you make that obnoxious roommate in your head shut up?
“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
How do you fit it all on the page ?
Today I want to try to answer this great question I received from Dana: " I really love sketching buildings and architecture but struggle with getting the size of what I want to draw, right on the page I'm working on, and correct (or close to correct) scale...
Let’s take time to see
Do you take time to look and see carefully? Be the drawing subject, become the flower, become the house, be the sunset you want to draw... Be here, be now, be present. Drawing is an active meditation: a feeling of being, of connecting, of time stopping to wonder. The...
Creative challenges in difficult times
Drawing in difficult times... For some of us the confinement is finished, but for a lot of people life is still very difficult. I was mainly following the urbansketchers movement, and drawing has meant a lot to many people in recent months - to those who were stuck at...
Looking for change
I want to share this beautiful text with you from Leslie Dwight:
What if 2020 isn’t cancelled?
What if 2020 is the year we’ve been waiting for?
A year so uncomfortable, so painful, so scary, so raw –
That it finally forces us to grow.
A year that screams so loud, finally awakening us from ignorant slumber.
A year we finally accept the need for change.
Declare change. Work for change. Become the change.
A year we finally band together, instead of pushing each other further apart.
2020 isn’t cancelled, but rather
the most important year of them all.
End of confinement
Confinement is coming to an end here in Belgium…. But I don’t want to ... I had plenty of things I wanted to do, and I wanted to rest also, and plenty of things to CREATE, and I didn’t do it! I want more time of confinement… (I realize that I’m in a luxury...
Confinement days 22 – 28: 4th sketchbook
Hello ! How are you feeling today? Today is day 28 of the confinement . I ended my 3rd leporello sketchbook with Camille again, taking a sun bath on the stairs. The video is below. I won't share all the videos in this blogpost, but you can see them on my Youtube...
