
Creativity can take all kinds of different forms. Some of it requires accuracy, precision and focus, with neat and tidy end results. Sometimes it takes on a more bonkers form, with weirdness, experimentation and unpredictability, and that is probably my favourite kind!
If you’ve been here before, you might know that I am doing a textiles degree with the Open College of the Arts. I’m now about a third of the way through it (progress is slow!), with the third unit finally finished, and the fourth one has just started.
To allow for mind changing and people wanting to switch courses or claim refunds, there is a two week induction period. This involves familiarisation with the learning portal thing and some creative exercises.
Unfortunately, due to appalling time management on my part, and needing to get the previous unit ready for assessment despite having had a while to do it, I didn’t quite get the creative exercise done in time. But I decided to finish it anyway.
The task was to make something that reflects where I live. Again, if you’ve been here before, you might know that I live in a large village in the flattest bit of Norfolk near the Wash. I’ve written about it before, and lots of the photos in the posts are ones I’ve taken of my local area.
So I decided to go out for a walk to collect things. Some physical things, like bits of plants, but also photos, colours and textures. I had an idea to make kind of deconstructed postcards, that would include the elements of line, texture, colour, tone an pattern, but separate, rather than all in together as a photo or a drawing.
There wasn’t really a clear plan! Sometimes you just have to start and see where it goes! My plan was to go out for a walk, really look and notice things, and collect ideas, then go from there.
So making a point of looking, I noticed footprints of humans and animals, lines in the fields, wispy, dead looking plants, some intertwined and some in a tangly mess. Although it’s easy to write January as grey and gloomy, there were muted blues, greens and greys, as well as dark brown and black. It was windy and cold, as it often is here, and the skies felt huge. It felt good to be outside.


I gathered up some bits of plants, mostly dead looking because of the time of year, but there was the remains of what were those little green balls that stick like velcro, some plants that had twisted together, and grasses. There were some others that were fluffy and wild looking.
A weird thing I hadn’t tried before was taking prints in the mud. It was an easy way to collect colour, textures and patterns all at once! I thought I might get some grass stains too, but the grass wasn’t sufficiently juicy, so it was just mud.
As mad ideas go, this was a good one! There were lots of footprints, human and dog, and I saw deer prints too (we have muntjacs here, which are little deer, about the size of a large dog). Some of the footprints are clearer than others, but they all made an interesting pattern. I used watercolour paper as it’s nice and thick and would withstand the mud without buckling.
Later, at home, I had a look, and a think. I quite like things I’ve seen that are little bundles of interesting. Shelley Rhodes does them, and so does Dorothy Caldwell. So I thought I might do something like those, with the deconstructed bits of colour, line and texture.
Looking at the mud prints, there was white space there that could be used for more colour.


I also drew some of the plant material I had collected, on tracing paper so that the layers underneath would still be visible. I forgot to take a photo of the plants! This is the best photo I had. What is not obvious in the photo is that when I told the offending white article to move her furry self off my things, she hissed at me!


Having a rummage, I found some bits of fabric that I had dyed in the autumn, some with nettles from my garden and some with blackberries that were growing wild not far from where I had collected the other things.
So I set about combining them. I find it useful to distract myself from overthinking by listening to a podcast or an audiobook!
Here are the results.







The lovely thing about doing this is that you can do it wherever you are, and whatever time of year it is. You don’t need to draw if it’s not your thing. I included drawings, but you don’t have to. Shelley Rhodes and Dorothy Caldwell don’t. It’s a way of collecting information and ideas about where you live, then sifting, sorting and assembling. There’s no way to do it wrong! If you are looking for an easy, low risk, experimental kind of project, then I encourage you to try it. And if you do, I’d love to see the results!
Leave a Reply