Reflecting on Celebrating Winter
Reflecting on Celebrating Winter
As you may have seen on Instagram, over January I ran Celebrating Winter, A 4-week course embracing the darker days and celebrating nature with creative workshops, ideas, and inspiration. I was delighted to have a few familiar faces returning from the Autumn course and spent early December putting the final touches onto the kit design and excitedly posting them out!
January arrived and saw us come together for our first workshop where we spoke about the words and feelings we had about the month ahead before collectively exploring colour mixing to create swatches in response to the words , gaining confidence in paint mixing but also exploring our own beliefs about feelings and colours.
We explored painting with the Gouache paints, seeking inspiration from what we could find outside in January to inspire a collection of illustrated nature motifs. As you can see even in the depths of Winter theres still beautiful nature to be inspired by, the hellebores brightening the garden, mushrooms appearing out in the forest, pinecones on pathways, and foliage in abundance outside.
The workshops that followed included printing with nature to make clay jewellery dishes, colour blocking techniques to explore shapes, textures and tones with gouache, Illustration with brush pens and exploring creating loose botanical drawings, painting fabric to create wall hangings that reflected the nature we were inspired by throughout the month and creative collaging.
Each Saturday morning I ran the live workshop where we gathered online to share our inspiration from the week and delve into a new creative skill together. Recordings followed up each session in case anyone couldn’t make it and we shared progress, inspiration, and more creative ideas in the Facebook group embracing finding the mid-winter magic of January.
For me, it was such a joy to teach, the group were so inspiring and brought so much to the course with their inspiration, thoughtful conversations and encouragement throughout the month. It made January feel joyful, uplifting and creative which weren’t the words I’d normally associate with the month after the twinkly lights of Christmas have dissapeared.
I’ve had some lovely feedback from the wonderful group that joined me and wanted to share it below…
Celebrating Winter Reviews
“Having just finished Becki’s winter workshop, I am so happy with how it went. I learned so many new techniques and skills, relaxed, embraced the season and found beauty in the middle of winter. Becki was so friendly, open and cheerful, and a brilliant teacher. I would definitely recommend doing any workshop with her - thank you!”
"January has certainly been uplifted by joining Becki Clark’s Celebrating Winter Workshop. Becki is just so creative and inspiring, and is a wonderful teacher managing to bring out artistic skills in everyone. We covered everything from colour mixing, crafting with clay, and printing with nature, to creating botanical illustrations with brush markers and creating collages, plus a whole lot more. Joining in online each week is like meeting up with like minded good friends. I can’t wait for the spring Workshop."
‘‘I absolutely loved the workshops and will definitely be joining again. Not only did I learn some new create skills, but I also found them really therapeutic. I have a very busy job so finding ways to relax and unwind are important.’’
And as the weeks roll past and the lighter days are on their way, I’m looking forward to packing and posting the kits for my next course Celebrating Spring beginning in late March. Come and join me creatively celebrating the start of the new season.