My Garden as Inspiration

and savoring the last days of this year's gardening season

We’re somehow now at the end of September. It’s officially fall. The days are getting shorter, darker, but for the moment we’re having warm weather and my garden keeps going.

At this time of year, I’m reluctant to let my garden go. I’m savoring every flower, every tomato to ripen, every meal created from what I harvest. I hold my breath in anticipation of the first killing frost, willing it to wait a bit longer.

I don’t do a lot of garden clean-up, but I do have a few more projects before this year’s gardening season is over — planting garlic, digging dahlia tubers, preserving a few more herbs, collecting seeds.

In some ways, despite the date on the calendar, the darker days and cooler nights, I’m still living in summer.

One of the reasons it’s always so hard for me to let it go is that my garden is a huge part of my art and creativity. As I’ve mentioned before, for me, gardening and art are beautifully intertwined.

My garden directly inspires my art.

My favorite way to paint is to cut an armload of flowers to bring into my studio for inspiration.

Sometimes what I cut is all from one plant — I study flowers, stems, leaves, buds — from different angles and in different stages of development.

Sometimes I gather a collection of what’s in bloom so I can paint a tangle of plants together in one piece.

The process — cutting the plant materials, studying my harvest, mixing colors, sketching and finally painting — is such a joy.

Our short(ish) gardening season limits my chances for the full process, though I also enjoy gathering leaves, seeds and dead stems to paint in the fall and winter. Other times of the year I turn to houseplants as my painting subjects or I paint from photographs.

If I were smarter, I’d plan ahead and take oodles of photos during the summer with the aim of painting from them. But I don’t. Most of my photos keep a record of my garden or capture a mood or memory. What’s difficult about painting from these sorts of photographs is that I can’t easily study the plant from every angle or clearly see every detail of flowers and stems and leaves.

I almost never paint exactly what I see. Instead I create my composition as I study the plants, combining different parts to make up an idealized whole. It’s so much harder to do this from photographs.

Part of the joy of my process is walking through my garden deciding what to paint. I look around to see what catches my eye. Colors, shapes, textures, combinations of this with that.

When I decide what to plant, it’s often with an eye toward what I’d like to paint.

Even so, the season is never long enough to paint it all. But it means I’m never without inspiration. Never without an idea of what I might paint next.

Although my garden directly inspires my art and although I love to be in my garden as a place of sanctuary, I rarely paint there. Sometimes I’ll sit in the garden to do my color mixing (the most joyful part of the process for me). A few times I’ve worked on part of a painting at the patio table.

But it’s hard to work outside. My art is careful and precise. So much can disrupt the process when you paint outside — wind, humidity, bugs. Now that my studio opens into the garden I don’t need to attempt to work outside. With the sliding doors opened to the screen I can hear the birds and smell the flowers while I sit at my painting table.

But I do love bringing my sketchbooks out to the garden.

My sketchbooks are the place I play and experiment. I don’t care if they’re messy. Mistakes are ok within their covers. I’ve had dogs step on and smudge their pages and all I feel is affection for the memory captured on paper.

Over the years I’ve come to develop a playful, fun sketchbook practice. I used to have a strange idea of what a sketchbook is supposed to be. That imagined perfection and rarified idea of the practice kept me from picking up my sketchbooks for years after I’d begun teaching myself how to paint. The blank page scared me more inside the covers of a book than as loose pages of watercolor paper.

These days I’ll use just about any medium you can imagine in my sketchbooks. The possibility to try different art supplies is one of the things I love about them. I also relish being able to play with different subjects and styles. A detailed botanical watercolor painting takes a lot of concentration. I love it, but I’d describe it as work (the very best kind), not play.

My sketchbooks are all about play.

When it comes to making art in the garden, I sometimes load up a basket with all sorts of art supplies, multiple sketchbooks and anything else I might want. Books, field guides, notebooks, cameras. It’s funny because I usually only use a fraction of what I haul around.

Outside I often keep things simple in my sketchbooks. Sometimes using just one pen. My other favorite way to work in the garden is with colored pencils.

My full collection of Prismacolors in their glass jars isn’t exactly light or easy to carry, but I enjoy all the colors, choosing just the right ones and layering, layering, layering.

My garden gives me inspiration for my sketchbooks, but in a different way than it inspires my paintings. I’ll nestle myself in amongst the plants. If I can’t see every detail from my perch, I don’t worry too much about it. I’ll simplify my subject or just sketch a part here or there. This flower. That leaf. Sometimes I just capture colors. Swatches. Stripes. Patterns.

My greatest joy is being there, connecting with nature and feeling a part of the magic happening all around me.

Sketchbooks have been at the front of my mind lately.

This week I finished filling my 20th sketchbook!

I’m also putting the finishing touches on a new, sketchbook-themed class. It will be my 30th class on Skillshare, many of which are about keeping a sketchbook! (Getting lost in editing the class is why I forgot to publish my post this morning and am getting it out in the afternoon instead. Ooops!). Look for it next week (follow me on Skillshare to be notified when it debuts).

To top it all of, Sketchbook Revival is going on right now, too!

I’m one of the more than 30 artists teaching at this year’s event and I’d love to have you join us. It would be the perfect way to dive into the wonderful practice of keeping a sketchbook or to find renewed energy if your sketchbook practice has been feeling a bit stagnant.

Writing this has me itching to head out to the garden with a basket full of art supplies. I don’t know how many more days I’ll be able to this year.

What about you? In what ways does your garden inspire you?

Do you keep a sketchbook? A garden journal? Does your garden play another role in your creativity? I’d love to hear about it.