Why I Sketch: Katherine from England

After kicking off our new “Why I Sketch” interview series in February — featuring a wonderful conversation with our community manager Amanda in Australia — I’m thrilled to be back today with the second installment. For this month’s conversation, I reached out to someone whose creative practice has fascinated me ever since she joined our sketching tribe in December 2018.

For our monthly challenge last December, environmental artist Katherine Owen did something a bit unusual: She helped a beautiful weeping beech tree to sketch. Yes, you read that right! Noticing how windy it was that day, she attached a few long watercolor brushes to the tree’s branches with rubber bands, placed a piece of watercolor paper beneath them, and then soaked the brushes in walnut ink, before letting the wind take over and move the brushes across the page.

Since then, Katherine has continued to bring her creative connections to nature to each of our challenges — she has painted with peat, sketched on a wooden board, and painted with plant pigments, showing us the vibrant yellow of Norway maple flowers and the soft spring green from celandine leaves. As each month has gone by, I’ve found myself with more and more questions for Katherine — I was especially curious whether her love for sketching or nature might have come first, and how we might put some of her techniques into practice ourselves.

Finally, Katherine and I had the chance to connect last week, and I hope our conversation — which ranged from nature photography to land art — will be as inspiring for you as it was for me:

What was your background with art growing up? I’d also like to explore how you developed such a strong connection — and desire to connect — with the natural world.

I grew up on a 1,000-acre estate in north Wales, where I could go out exploring. I’ve always been connected to nature and fascinated by it, and I’ve always been creative, from when I was small. My gran always said that I was very much like my uncle, because he went on to study fine arts, so they put me in that category in the family — that I was like my uncle.

I went on to study A-level art at school, but then left it for a while. A few years later, I came back into creativity through photography. I had a very basic camera at the time and took some photographs in the snow. My mum went to pick up the photos, which had been printed, and the guy who handed them over said, “I’ve been trying for years to take photographs like that.” He was asking about them because he thought they were my mum’s, and then she said that they were mine. And he said, “Well, she should do something more with her photography.” And so that was the encouragement that made me go down the photography route.

I eventually went off to photography college and learned to develop my own photos and was totally fascinated with photography for a very long time. I’ve developed my own style of backlighting nature with sunlight, and I love macro photography as well. So I first started to look at nature in a closer way through my photography.

What were the first steps you took in getting back into art?

It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve gained the confidence to get back into experimenting more with my art. I went on a land art course in North Wales in 2013, and we were playing around with nature. It was perfect for me, because I’m so inspired by people like Andy Goldsworthy, who create art from nature. It’s such a nice thing to do to create something and then leave it behind for someone else to discover. I found that really exciting, so I wanted to learn more about that process.

While I was on that particular course, one of the tutors was a fine artist named Marged Pendrell. She asked us to draw the sound around us, which I thought was the craziest thing ever. I didn’t have a pencil or anything on me at the time, just this piece of paper that she gave me.

I said to her, “What am I going to draw with?” and she said, “Whatever’s around you.” That was all she said.

So I went off, picked a fern, scrunched it between my fingertips, pressed it onto the paper, and drew with the fern. And I just sat there and thought, “Why haven’t I done this before?” My journey of painting with plants just started from there, and it became a bit of an obsession with color.

I felt so much more connected to nature than I ever had before, just through that one process.

When you took that class in land art in 2013, had you already started sketching at that point?

No.

So this is really interesting to me. I was thinking that you were already sketching and you then brought in your love for plants and trees, but it actually seems the nature element is what brought you into sketching? 

Yes, nature brought me into sketching. I hadn’t really thought about it in that way, but it was the land art first — playing with nature — and then the painting with the plant pigments, and then the sketching has only just come in over the last few years, when I built my confidence to do that.

But I haven’t been trained formally in sketching, so it’s a style I’ve developed just through playing and having the courage to put something down on a blank page. It’s been really exciting actually, I’ve really enjoyed it.

How did you grow that courage? What are some of the things that worked for you, and what would you recommend to someone else looking to grow their creative courage?

I think painting with plants is an amazing way of doing that, to start by just playing with color. And progressing on, I also feel as though I’ve just been playing.

You know, like painting with the wind. That was just me up on the ridge on a really windy day, and then the watercolor just going across the page and then I’m thinking, “Hang on a minute, this is quite exciting — painting with the elements.” I was just trying to think of different ways to encourage people who don’t feel that they’re creative. I thought if I could inspire someone who says they’re not creative to have a go, that would be amazing.

It’s happened recently, actually. There’s someone called Adrian, and he was at the Kington Walking Festival. He announced to me that he wasn’t creative, but he was interested in what I was doing. He came on my “Discovering Nature’s Colors” walk with me — I didn’t even say I was painting with plants — and we just had a walk exploring color. We were basically painting with the pigments, but just creating a palette of colors.

He was so fascinated with it. At the start of the walk, he’d said that he was scared because there were artists in the group, and I think he found it really intimidating. But by the end of it, he created the most amazing painting with plant pigments and he’s really excited to try sketching. I never thought I’d get him to do that.

I suppose ultimately, it’s about experimenting, just having fun with the process, not taking it too seriously, and relaxing into it — not worrying about the end result. Because I think always in the end, you will surprise yourself.

So I feel as though we’ve been circling around this answer in much of what you’ve shared, but if someone asked you, “Why do you sketch?” what would you share with them?

I need to be creative, it makes me feel better. It’s my form of meditation, it’s what keeps me calm and inspires me. It’s part of me: I have to do it, and if I don’t, it affects who I am.

I noticed at my work that I wasn’t having so much creativity through my job. I asked to change my hours so I could have my Sketchbook Fridays every two weeks, and that’s just transformed everything for me: knowing that I’ve got my Sketchbook Fridays coming up.

Before I would have just said, “Maybe I don’t have enough time,” but I’ve made a concerted effort to create the time, because I feel the better person for being creative.

Tell us more about your upcoming sketching event this weekend, “Sketch Across the World.” Where did the idea come from, and what is the weekend going to look like?

There’s an arboretum where I live, and there’s lots of rare trees from all over the world. It was when I was walking around all these trees in the garden that I had the idea to “sketch across the world.” I just thought if I could encourage people to come outside, to enjoy being outside as much as I do, connect with nature, and try sketching outdoors, maybe people would stop and look at nature in a more meaningful way.

Sketching outdoors is like an experience — that’s what I would say. I have to be out in the elements and use all my senses: What can I hear, what can I see, what can I smell? That’s all part of it. I love the wind on my face, or the wind taking the paint, or the rain going onto the page. I think if we embrace all of the elements that are thrown at us as we’re sketching, they become part of that experience.

And so what I’m trying to do through “Sketch Across the World” is share that with people — that experience. This weekend, I’m encouraging people to go out on the 4th and 5th of May and create a sketch outside, and then share it on Instagram using the hashtag #sketchacrosstheworld. Then I’m hoping to share the results with everybody.

Perhaps this would be a good place to end: If someone is wanting to try painting with plants, what first steps would you recommend on how they can go out into their own backyards and paint with the world around them?

This applies to people all over the world, but go out and choose a plant you recognize. So in the UK, I would always say a dandelion with the yellow flower, and their leaf, which is really good. Then you get it between your fingertips, press it onto the paper, and press the pigment out.

Be mindful of what you’re collecting, though, so that you know the plants are safe. You could actually try it at home, if you’ve got some lettuce or herbs — something which you have on hand. You could try it with basil or anything like that, and just try on a piece of paper. That might be the best place to start, and then to explore more by going outside.

Once you’ve tried it for the first time, with one plant or one leaf, you then surprise yourself and realize what is possible. And then it sort of snowballs from there…

So there should be a bit of a warning here as well, that you’ll never see plants the same again, going forward.