You know, sometimes you just hit a wall. I mean, a real brick wall in your head. I was slogging through this awful project, nothing to do with art, just pure mind-numbing paperwork that was sucking the life out of me. My brain felt like it was turning into actual oatmeal.
So, I just pushed away from the desk. Figured I needed to do something, anything, with my hands, something real. I remembered I had this old set of watercolors, cheap ones, probably half dried up. And a beat-up sketchbook. My garden's been a bit wild lately, but there were a few late roses still hanging on, looking kind of brave.
My grand plan? Paint the roses. Sounds simple, right? Well, let me tell you, it was a disaster. My roses looked like sad, pink blobs. The leaves were just… green smudges. I tried a daisy next. It looked terminally ill. I swear, the actual flowers in the garden were probably offended.
I was about to chuck the whole lot in the bin, feeling even worse than when I started. Then, out of nowhere, I thought of Cicely Mary Barker. Yeah, the Flower Fairies lady. We had one of her books when I was a kid, all those delicate little fairy folk nestled in perfectly drawn flowers. I always thought they were a bit twee, if I'm honest, but undeniably skillful.
I don't own any of her books now, but a quick search on my phone brought up dozens of her illustrations. I just sat there, looking. Really looking. Noticing how she wasn't just drawing a flower; she was capturing its personality, its structure. And those fairies, they weren't just stuck on top, they seemed to grow right out of the plants.
So, I went back to my sad sketchbook. I wasn't trying to draw fairies, mind you. Not my thing. But I tried to change how I was looking. My process went something like this:
- I picked one single rose, a slightly droopy one.
- I actually touched it, felt the petals, looked at how the stem curved.
- I tried to forget about making a "pretty picture" and just focused on the shapes, the way the light hit one side.
- I used my pencil first, very lightly, trying to understand its form, a bit like Barker's clear lines.
- Then, a tiny bit of watercolor, trying not to make mud this time.
It wasn't magic. My rose still didn't look like something out of a fancy botanical book, and definitely not like Barker's. But it wasn't a sad blob anymore. It looked, well, a bit more like a rose. A slightly tired, end-of-season rose, but a rose nonetheless.
I spent a good hour or so just doing that. Focusing on one bloom, then another. The frustration from that awful project didn't completely vanish, but it receded a bit. It was like Barker’s meticulousness, her quiet observation, somehow seeped in a little.
The biggest takeaway for me? It wasn't about suddenly becoming a great artist. It was about the act of really seeing. Barker, with her fairies and all, was a heck of an observer of the natural world. And sometimes, just trying to see things clearly, patiently, like she must have, is enough to clear out some of the oatmeal in your brain. It’s a small practice, but it made a difference to my day. Still had to finish that darn paperwork, though. No fairy magic for that, unfortunately.
