How To Take A Mini Creative Retreat + See Inside My Sketching Journal!
Plein Air Watercolour Sketching Adventures
This past week I've been heading out in the van in the late afternoons to spend more time in nature, and I've been taking along my watercolours to capture the sunsets in my Etchr journal. It’s been incredibly nurturing and good for my heart.
Being in nature, with the intention of just being present, doing what feels good in the moment, and watching the changing colours has been exactly what my inner child has needed this week.
I wanted to share some photos of my moments captured in paint.
On election night, I didn't want to go out and so instead, I brought my cosmos from the garden inside and painted them in a vase :)
I invite you to see if you might like to spend time in nature and how you can weave it into your schedule. Even a few moments in my garden I find restorative, but having a couple of hours outside multiple times in the past week has been deeply healing.
You might like to leave a comment sharing what your intention is around spending time in nature and where you would like to go.
Even setting the intention is powerful, and it doesn't mean we have to do it right away, but it will gently simmer in our awareness, and when the time is right, we can know what it is we want and then act on it.
It took me quite a few months of feeling the tug in my heart to go out on these little painting excursions, and as soon as the weather cooled, I felt it was time to explore and see where my curiosity led.
So I organised with my husband not to use the van as a utility vehicle for renovations for a few days, threw a foam mattress in the back and loaded up the van with a packet of biscuits, a jar of peanut butter, my journal, kindle and watercolour supplies and headed out for these little 2-hour mini-retreats.
I can't believe how restorative they were, and I'll be doing plenty more of them in the coming months and years, I'm sure.
Have you ever done a little mini-retreat like this? What do you like to do when you make time to nurture yourself and your creativity? I'd love to hear your ideas below - we can all inspire each other!
About Nicola Newman
I'm a Creative Business Coach, Award-Winning Artist & Mentor for Creative Hearts who want to flourish, flow & prosper.
My passion is inspiring and supporting Creative Hearts to trust their inner wisdom and carve out a life that’s personally meaningful and fulfilling to them.
I share practical, evidence-based tools for Creative Hearts seeking to improve their lives or businesses. My work draws from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), mindfulness-based techniques, body-based practices, and neuroscience -- and my own creative living adventures -- among other approaches.
My mission is to support Creative Hearts to:
Dissolve creative blocks, develop a loving relationship with themselves, nurture their creativity and reframe the beliefs and patterns that keep them from following their heart and making the creative contribution they would love to make in the world.
My approach is to embrace gentleness, playfulness and self-care to navigate self-doubt and instead cultivate deep self-trust so you can truly enjoy the creative process, bring together your body of work, make money doing what you love and leave a creative legacy you’re proud of. You can read more about my story, here.
