Day 1 - DISCOVER WHAT INSPIRES YOU
Welcome Nature Wonderers!
I’m so looking forward to sharing Day 1 of the course with you. Before we begin, let’s do a quick summary of what we’ll be doing over the next few days:
Day 1 (today): Discover What Inspires You - We’ll be exploring a local natural space for 10 - 30 minutes and then making a unique colour palette inspired by this.
Day 2: Opening Up Inspiration - We’ll look at this palette and your photographs to inspire free writing and find a phrase that represents your own experience.
Day 3: Collecting Curiosity - In this lesson we’ll gather together more objects or images that connect to your colour palette and the phrase you chose to make a creative moodboard.
Day 4: Studying Shape - We’ll begin to look more closely at the objects you have selected, exploring different ways to represent their shape.
Day 5: Celebrate Your Journey - In our last lesson we will bring everything together to create a beautiful paper wreath that celebrates your own personal journey on this course, and that you can display for future inspiration!
Looking For and Seeing Nature
Today we are going to explore our immediate surroundings to rediscover the nature we see every day and to reawaken our curiosity.
These ideas all come from my own experiences - at certain points in my life I felt very weighed down by responsibility and routine, the day-to-day left me tired, uninspired and lacking in creative drive. In response I started setting myself small prompts as I did my errands, for example ‘Looking up’ as a theme for my week reminded myself to look beyond my immediate, ground level view. As I looked above me I realised there were birds in flight, cloud formations and silhouetted landscapes I was missing every day.
To begin, choose a place that you know well, and that makes you feel connected to nature. This could be a local walk you do regularly, perhaps on the way to the shop, a route you take to walk the dog, or a park you pass by every day on the school run. If you aren’t able to go on a walk, then it might be somewhere you drive to and then find a comfortable place to sit.
For those who are doing the course from within your home, this could be your backyard, your garden if you have one, or it could be looking out of the window. I have also included some of my own photographs and video further down the page which you are very welcome to use too if that suits you better.
Whatever your chosen place, try to spend between 10 and 30 minutes looking and exploring this space with the attention you might not normally be able to give it. I know often my mind is full of to-do lists, or thinking about that thing I regret saying in a recent conversation, it can mean I miss so much of what is around me.
However, I’ve found if you take out your phone or camera and set yourself that challenge of looking for things to photograph it can really help to focus your attention. You may also want to take a notebook or sketchbook to write down any thoughts, observations or even make little doodles of what you find most interesting.
This activity is all about making a little bit of space to find what you are interested in as an individual. It might be that you focus on the colours of different leaves. Perhaps you find some insects you want to take close ups of. It could be the shadows that are made by trees if you are lucky enough to have a sunny day, or the reflections in water on a wetter one.
I’ve created a prompt list you might also want to use - you can either copy down one you want to choose, or print or save the whole list.
I hope you enjoy this first day of the course, and please feel free to email me at info@eleanorchaney.com if you have any questions.
Photos here
Resources
For this activity you will need a camera phone, a digital camera or even a Polaroid if you still have one! You may also want to use a printer to print out the photos you take, and to use a sketchbook to capture thoughts, feelings or make sketches as you work through the prompts.
Prompts
These are just some suggestions to get you started, please don’t feel under any pressure to do them all!
Create Your Colour Palette
Now that you have gathered together your photographs, choose 9 that you think most capture the experience or simply that you like the most!
To finish for today we are going to create a colour palette based on these images. There are a few different ways that you can do this:
Make a palette using paint or colouring pencils
If you have colouring pencils, watercolours or any other paint then you can mix the colours until you get the closest to those you like in your photographs.
Create a 9 image grid
The quickest way to do this is using the free app Instagram Layout. I recorded myself doing this on my iPhone on the video below, or keep scrolling for step-by-step instructions. If you don’t want to use Instagram Layout you can also use Canva or PicCollage.
Add video from Vimeo
Install Instagram Layout from the app store for free
Open Layout - you’ll find all your recent photos ready
Click on each photo you want to include - as you select it a small blue circle with a tick will appear. These will start to collect under ‘Choose Layout’ at the top.
Select 9 photos and then click on the layout you prefer
You’ll now see your layout appear on a new window. Click on the photo and it will be highlighted with a blue box. You can now drag and move around the photos.
When you are happy click ‘Save’ and you will find your grid in your photo album!
Use a photo editing programme to select colours
I use Adobe Photoshop to do this, but any image editing programme which gives you the option to use a ‘colour picker’ tool will work. For my palettes I used Instagram to make a 9 photo grid as in the video above, and I used the colour picker to select colours from each image. I then dropped these colours into solid circles to create my palette beneath.
I hope whatever method you choose you enjoy the process, and I’ll see you tomorrow for Day 2 - Opening Up Inspiration!