It was the kind of rain that falls heavy as ice, rain that makes the trees shudder and the birds lose all interest in flight.
I adore the rainy season. I love the soft, quiet whispering rain and the deluge of heavy, splattering raindrops. I love the mist and the thunder, boiling clouds and dancing trees.
Rainy days are the best days.
Some plants are just more romantic than others. Like lavender. I see it and think of my beloved Jane Austen books. I think of how the Dashwood sisters would surely have had little sachets of it among their linens. Or how Lizzy Bennet might have used a stem as a fragrant bookmark.
I touch the leaves and carry the scent on my fingertips, a little more spicy than sweet, and can hear the quiet summer breeze that makes lavender fields bob and nod like the plants are about to fall asleep, lazy under the bright sunshine.
Just thinking of lavender also brings to mind cool white cotton dresses with touches of eyelet lace. Bare feet. Cut grass. Dirt paths that connect neighbors.
Dianthus (also known as pinks and carnations) always reminded me of Alice In Wonderland. They look to me like little faces that could burst into song at any moment. Do you see it, too?
My tip for creating beautiful light in your photos below:
To get that dreamy, soft, even light, place your work/flatlay close to a source of indirect light. I think light looks best coming from the top or a little to one side. Lighting from the bottom creates what’s called “monster light”, which can look a little off. Indirect light source is key (such as from a north window) if you want to avoid deep, contrasty shadows.
Next, hold up a white foam board, posterboard, sheet of paper, bedsheet, or anything else white you have on hand, opposite your light source to bounce light back in and fill in those shadows. Watch the light change as you add in the bounce- it’s like magic!
That’s really all it takes to have nice even light in your photos. Of course, I’m a big believer in there’s no wrong way to do things when it comes to art, so don’t be afraid to play with different kinds of light. Harsh direct sunlight, monster light, colored light- play around and have fun. You might just hit on something new you absolutely love!
Isn’t it funny how seemingly random things become connected in our minds?
When I think of marigolds, I always think of a particular cotton summer dress, old fashioned calico strewn across a bed of pale yellow fabric. It had a crinkled bodice and fluttery short sleeves.
I can see it hanging on the clothes line at the house I lived in when I was small and I can feel the sunshine on my cheeks and hear the wind talking to the fields of July grass.
I don’t remember if the dress was mine or my mom’s… I just remember the dress and the summer and a bright blue sky. And of course, I remember the marigolds.
It was probably just a fleeting moment, a mundane experience that I lived a hundred times. Yet, it has stuck with me in vivid detail.
When was the last time you were just still? And nope, sleeping doesn’t count.
There’s something special about the simple bliss of just listening. Listening to your body, listening to God. Listening to stillness itself. Did you know it has a sound? Part heartbeat, part ocean, part gravity.
Do you meditate? If you pray, do you listen for answers? I think that the more you practice listening, the louder the answers become.
I’ve been noticing how badly I need to set aside time for stillness. With everything I want to accomplish, sometimes this little ritual gets pushed aside when it should really be number one on my daily to-do. What do you do to make being still easier to achieve?
Where do you look for inspiration? Or does inspiration find you instead?
One of my favorite sources of inspiration is looking for patterns in nature: realizing that tree bark almost looks like a brick wall or finding paisley patterns in the wet sand at the beach. Polka dotted starfish and striped granite.
And I’m someone who’s always actively looking for inspiration. Watching movies or listening to someone tell a story or looking at a piece of old lace fills my creative tank and gets me excited to begin a new project.
What do you doodle? What fills the margins of your biology class notes, the napkin beside your latte at the coffee shop, or the back of an old, creased receipt while you wait at the doctor’s office?
Would you believe my doodles are usually cubes and squares? I draw them stacked on top of each other, stacked inside each other, some with windows, some with doors. I practice different ways of shading, different line widths. I make them into angular layer cakes and weird, ten story houses.
Yet when I sit down at my sketchbook, it’s most often plants and flowers. Isn’t it funny that when I mindlessly draw, it’s kinda the opposite? All straight lines and order and none of the beautiful chaos of nature that thrills me so.
It’s there. In the spaces between the raindrops, in the inky depths of the shadows outside your window at night. In the seconds after the lightning but before the peal of thunder and in the dreams you can’t quite remember when you wake.
It lives in those moments when the whole world seems to be holding its breath, when something that exists just beyond what you can grasp seems so much bigger than you. Because it is bigger. At least for now.
Those little almost glimpses are what you know you can be. When you feel so excited it’s scary, when your fingertips tingle, and when you gasp for no real reason at all.
Don’t stop looking for it, reaching towards it, dreaming of it at night. Because one day, those dreams you can’t remember will be your waking day.