short doors lead to short days

December 21, 2025 | Sheree

Shoot. Develop. Print. Film Camera Experience

December 20, 2025December 21, 2025 | Sheree

I finally got to see the magic happen.

I was gifted a voucher for a ClassBento creativity class last Christmas. And I’m just getting around to using it today as I attended a photography class with Daniel Dabrowski.

I’ve wanted to experience the dark room and developing my own photography for decades. So I was super excited to finally fulfil this dream.

I used a ME Super Pentax 35mm camera. Daniel gave me some instructions around the camera – aperture, shutter speeds, the light and composition.

And then I was let free to take images in the park. I was in The Meadows, Edinburgh. It was dry but grey. But I loved the opportunity, the freedom to roam and snap.

The light is everything.

Once I got 36 images it was back to get the film out of the camera off the spool and developed.

I learnt so many new things that I’ll probably forget but I did learn to do it all in the dark. Feeding the film into a reel to be placed a canister so is light protected. Then adding the chemical to the special quantities needed for the film. Shaking gently for certain times and letting it stand. Hanging up the film reel to dry. Yes. There are images captured on the film. No duds. We have something to work with. Relief.

So many steps in the process of developing your own film and you can get into a focused rhythm, a meditative magic. It’s such a beautiful dance. Another experience where I felt as if I’d stepped out of time.

All that mattered was what was right in front of me. Witnessing the images appear. Shadows, ghost, haunting upon the papers.

I look forward to continuing the practice.

Shades of Green

December 19, 2025December 21, 2025 | Sheree

I love this simple mixture of greens. They say you only truly see a colour when it’s placed beside another colour. That’s when it really comes alive. These greens are alive for me here.

Over on patreon

December 18, 2025 | Sheree

I spend so much time and energy on the work I share at Sunderland University, one or two sessions, out of their social work studies that I’ve decided the share what I create over on my Patreon in a special collection.

It’s just the power points for now. I’ll go back in at some point and share the resources as well. But I just thought it might be of some use for someone else. I’m not expert either. And my style and message has changed over the six years of doing it. I’m mighty please withy last one, November 2025, because I just centred blackness all the way. I was unapologetic and intend to stay this way.

Go check them out if you’re interested.

A Black WOmen’s Creative Retreat

December 17, 2025December 18, 2025 | Sheree

I’m remembering the summer as well as archiving the events that went down @Earth Sea Love.

In August we managed to pull off a black women’s creative retreat. A weekend of creative camping in the middle of a forest. We cooked, and created, shared stories and slept under the stars. It was a magical time as we stepped out of time, to steal our lives back on our own terms. We laughed and cried and sang and walked and reconnected with ourselves, each other and nature.

I’ve just spent some time, updating the Earth Sea Love website with some events that took place over the summer, this retreat included because it’s important to have a record, an archives of these happenings. My heart and body remembers these days, these events because they have a profound effect on my {BEING}. Events like these reinforces everything that I {BE} and do for myself and others. And it is finding those ways of getting free, more often and for longer stretches of time.

This image above is of Pauline Mayers, one of the women to come on the retreat. And as you can see from her facial expression, and the sheer glow coming off her being, we had fun out there in nature together.

I’m now fixing to create more opportunities like this one. It was a dream come true, a dream started in a visual journal spread one day a few years ago. And who says dreams don’t come true. All you have to do is believe. Believe in yourself and the community around you and all will come to fruition.

I’m getting into hibernation mode

December 16, 2025December 18, 2025 | Sheree

even though the whole of 2025 has felt like a long, slow, much needed hibernation.

A Creative Sketchbook, Dec 2025

December 15, 2025 | Sheree

I’m not sure how my creative sketchbook differs from my visual journal. Intention maybe.

Perhaps, I think , I’m attempting to develop my art practice within a designated space. A study maybe.

I haven’t really been in the thick of my art making practice since the preparation for my Baltic exhibition back in 2022-3.

This was quickly followed with the writings and (re)drafts of Darkling, my poetry/hybrid collection published in October 2024.

After this 2025 has been a period of extended rest and refusal.

But something has been niggling me. The desire to create with paint again. the desire to play without expectations and outcomes/ products.

I’ve just scratched the itch through scrolling through Pinterest. Adding another abstract or landscape painting to a board that I’ll probably not look at again.

But it satisfied this niggling feeling. Until it didn’t.

It was going back into the classroom. Completing a few days of supply that pushed me over the edge.

The time I gave away for money. The time I’d lost pursuing my own pursuits. And realising that I wasn’t pursuing all the pursuits I wanted to pursue in the time I had/have.

So out came a creative sketchbook, inspired by the 30 days sketchbook challenge created by Cheryl Taves over at Insight Creative.

This is as much as I’m willing to share for now about the challenge, my creative sketchbook, processes and insights.

One of my rules is that it’s just for my eyes only. I want to see how this rule changes my practice. I want to create without fear but with curiosity. I want to give myself all the freedom without worrying about what others will think or say or comment on.

It’s not like I’m hanging on other people’s responses and reactions but I have gotten into a habit of just sharing anything and everything on my blog and I’m curious to see what happens when I keep things to myself.

Just for my eyes, heart, and soul only.

So far I’m enjoying the process of the challenge and I’m reflecting and paying attention to what makes my heart sing, what’s my creative vocabulary, what pushes my energies.

Do doubt whatever I explore within my creative sketchbook will be showing up in everything that I create. In everything who I {BE}. For sure.