Yesterday marked 50 days of my creative sketchbook practice. 50 days of consistently turning up to the page to play and experiment.
What I’m learning is that I can trust myself to turn up for myself. I’m learning that my practice muscles can be strengthened. I’m learning that I love creating colour fields. It like what I create with visual journaling but different.
Here with these colour fields, there’s layers built up and then stripped back. Marked into. Scratched away to leave textures I like to see and feel. This practice is definitely expanding my palimpsest exploration and obsession.
I’m learning that I want this my creativity to be the main focus of my day and everything else is the add on, not the priority. Not the main meal. My creativity is my life source/force.
I’m practicing taking my creative sketchbook practice into my life. The attitudes, the risk-taking, the consistency, the trust in self and my art-making, these values and practices I’m carrying with me throughout my day, no matter who I come into contact with.
This creative sketchbook practice keeps me centred and focused on my feelings of joy and abundance. This practice keeps me present and checked in with myself, moment to moment.
On top of my visual journaling practice, this safe space of play and to {BE} me, is enough. Is more than enough to fill my day with bliss and connection. A practice that I’m finding opens up doors inside and outside of me, for me and others.
Visual journaling in community is always time well spent.
Even if it’s their first rodeo, to witness the freedom, the mess, the expansion as paint meets paper meets card. Bliss. Magic. A gift.
Walking out with their own visual journals clutched close to their chests, promising to carry on the practice themselves, now they’ve got the power within their hands, hearts and soul.
A job well done any time the visual journaling practice is passed on.
I do believe it makes us better human beings. Better to each other and ourselves. Softer, caring and well-nourished.
In preparation for a visual journaling workshop over the weekend, I’ve been going through past journal spreads.
I started visual journaling in August 2015. This image above is from a journal I created later that year. Back then visual journaling was a life line. It provided me with a path out of rock bottom and all it was, was dreaming on paper. Creating a safe space where I wouldn’t be judged or dismissed but where I was held.
Since this time, my visual journaling has morphed and changed. It’s needed to because my life and circumstances have changed so much since then. The world has also.
But the main premise remains – it’s a simple but powerful tool of connection with myself. It supports me in turning up in this world in all my fullness.
Wanted or not, I’m here and this practice keeps me present. Makes me present. Makes me pay attention and breathe.
This is one of my favourite images from my extensive collection.
I know exactly when and where it was taken. Westfjords Residency, Iceland, Feb/March 2017.
This was my go to breakfast. Coffee, cornflakes and Skyr, Icelandic protein enriched yogurt. I love the colours, the composition. The items included. But most of all, I love the memories and feelings just looking at this image evokes.
It takes me back to that time of wonder and discovery during my second time to Iceland. A residency I gifted to myself, writing the application while teaching temporally; frustrated, longing to get out and create.
I stayed for two weeks in the shadows of the mountains, knee deep in snow most days until the thaw came with some greening of the landscape.
I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing there back then. I just knew in my body that I needed to get away, gain inspiration from the landscape and {BE}.
I might not have completed much when I was out there, but I know when I returned the experience shifted my creativity and how I saw myself as a creative.
I saw glimmers of the Northern Lights during this retreat. Pale creamy wisps and trails in a dark navy sky. It was magical and a mystery.
This makes me think about my art-making practice and how most of the time I’m working in the dark, moving out of my comfort zone into the unknown, looking and listening hoping to catch a glimpses of magic and mystery in the process.
What’s created on the page, like this photography, is an archive, a record which when looked upon brings to the surface all the memories and feelings of the process, the experience once again experienced to the full with wonder and a smile.
If you’ve been around here for a few years then you’ll know that I choose a word each year to act as a guiding source for the year ahead.
I hold this word lightly as a beacon to support my movement through the year as I navigate through society, this world, with the ebb and flow of commitments, responsibilities, projects and inspirations.
Last year, fugitivity took hold of me and kept me refusing those things that have already been refused of me throughout the year.
Fugitivity and visual journaling went hand in hand in 2025 to the point that I was able to create a loophole of retreat, a space of freedom and play for most of 2025. No doubt fugitivity is changing my life and remains in my rucksack as I traverse into 2026. The year of the horse ( more on that later).
So what is my word of 2026?
Usually I have something chosen at the back end of Oct moving into November. It just comes to me, lands and takes up root as something that just feels right. And something I want to carry for a year or more and explore.
That didn’t happen this year.
I had the feeling of being ‘unapologetic’ to the max but that felt, as a word, so dated. I feel it has been co-opted by mainstream and capitalist culture that to hear it now feel so twee for me. It’s original radical power being neutered.
Then we had radicale ( with an ‘e’) meaning to get to the basic root of something. Its natural origin. It’s fundamental and essential, changing from the roots. As well as radical being judged as unconventional, pushing things to the limits.
But again this word didn’t sit well within my gut. I wasn’t feeling it.
For me my word of the year has to be embrewed with feelings as well as be able to stand the test of time, the year and beyond, as well as act as talisman, inspiration and haven. Words of the past has included voice, water, shakti, open, listen, love etc.
I have a tall ask for my word of the year but none of my words of the year so far has let me down. I suppose it’s a difficult act to follow after fugitivity as this practice has changed my life in so many ways.
But choose a word of the year I will because after so long in this practice, I would feel naked walking into 2026 without some word(s) at my back as support and/both motivator.
I’m making the commitment here now to go with – AfroSurreal – as my words of 2026.
Of course AfroSurreal is much more than a word it’s a whole artist and literary movement which blends the weird and absurd with the reality of blackness. That the reality of blackness, being black today is surreal.
AfroSurreal is also a way of {BEING} that roots me further into the RIGHT NOW. Creating the future that has to happen right now.
I’ll be exploring more and sharing about AfroSurreal over the next couple of days to get my basis understanding and direction down. And then look out for more posts about how I’m moving and shaking with AfroSurreal(ism) for the coming year.
I’m excited to see where this word will take me. A good sign if any that I’m chosen the right word ( movement) for 2026.
i’ve been spending the last week or so really diving deep into what my word for 2026 will be.
2025 was all about fugitivity, dreaming and conjuring. And this will continue into 2026. But i need some direction. Something that will encompass my purpose with room enough to expand and explore.
i learnt a few lessons in 2025 in adopting a persona/ a mask in order to protect myself / to create some safe space for myself so ‘ i may not see myself as others see me.’ Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
i’m fixing to create ( or is it continuing to create?) new narratives around blackness in order to expunge the past dominant narratives we’ve been fed around blackness up until NOW.
i think i’ve found my word for 2026 – AFROSURREAL.
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.
Living Wild Studios 