Creativity Through Nature : Foraged, Recycled and Natural Mixed-Media Art

Acclaimed watercolour artist Ann Blockley maps her personal journey into working, playing and creating with nature. From dislodging creative blocks and drawing inspiration for your work simply by being outside to incorporating natural materials into your art and making your own inks and paper.

From allotment inspiration to nature prints, from harnessing patchwork concepts to recycling pieces of art, to the alchemy of found materials, this is a journey to find new creativity through our connection with the natural world.

In her most passionate and personal book for artists, acclaimed watercolor artist Ann Blockley takes the reader through a series of ideas of working with nature—in its widest sense—to nurture our creativity, inspire us, make us more sustainable artists, and breathe back energy and flow when our artistic streams run dry. In “Go Outside and Play,” the author exhorts artists to recapture a fun, no-pressure way of being outside and use that feeling when creating. In “Connecting Materials to Place,” she creates her own paint from the local pond. In “The Slow Movement,” the artist reveals her year of working on a specific local hedgerow and painting a series of different interpretations in its every-changing detail. She created regular creative rituals, using her weekly playing card as a starting point for a new painting to reflect the season each week. She reuses old paintings, and tissue and paper—wabi-sabi style—to create new textures and even new paintings. Including work from other artists as well as her own, she shows the ideas and work from textile and mixed-media artists.