Back again: new plans, upcoming classes and thoughts about the perfectionist brain

It’s September and I’m back from my summer break. For anyone who joined this newsletter in the last four weeks, a warm welcome! I usually share sketching tips and art-related stuff, but in this installment I will talk a little bit about personal stuff and my plans. I hope you will also forgive me if I haven’t answered your emails or comments yet, I just had to take a break from everything and the pile of emails is just overwhelming.

So what have I been up to? Throughout August, I recovered (more or less) from being ill, went hiking a lot, did a news fast for 4 weeks and read lots of books. It was a welcome change to just have time for rest and relaxation, and I can only urge every over-worked self-employed artist to make a holiday or summer break a fixed date in your calendar (or spring break, or fall break – whatever works best, just make sure to really get away from your desk for a few weeks at least once a year). I’m still not recovered entirely from my previous workload and I will have to take it slow to protect my health, so here’s to lazy productivity that revolves around the well-being of a person, not performance, perfectionism and burn-out. Here are a few impressions of the few things I sketched during my holidays (a more detailed post and a sketchbook tour will follow soon):

What else?
I’m currently preparing to film a new online art class soon – the one I abandoned before my break. It’s about botanical sketching, and since a lot of flowers I wanted to use in my demos are still in bloom (surprisingly, directly on my balcony), I might as well make use of that and film the class while the topic is still fresh in my mind. This means you will get a class about sketching flowers just when the Northern hemisphere is going into the colder season. Oh well. I’ve been debating this internally because the timing seems less than ideal – but I can’t film this material and then let it hang around in my finished folder for half a year.

One of my plans for the coming years is to pressure myself less about these things – to care less about optimal marketing moves and good timing and whatnot. I tried to conform to this in the past and I found that most of it feel tacked on and doesn’t really work for my business either. I know many of you prefer authenticity over “smooth” marketing, and I definitely do too. I still have to make a living from my art, and advertise new classes and other projects, but apparently I’m not motivated enough to make a big perfect plan out of all these endeavors – to be honest I’m just to tired to share anything else than my authentic thoughts and the projects I believe in with you. I simply don’t have the energy to come up with automated email sequences, or a refined “personal brand”, and I don’t see the point. And I think I’m okay with that. I’d rather share these long, rambling posts with you and connect with you as real humans. I hope that won’t put me out of business entirely. 🙂

Currently I’m building what I do around what I can achieve energy-wise, and I hope you will stay with me and go with the flow. If that means publishing a flower sketching class in autumn, then so be it. Why are you so upset, my perfectionist brain? There are other places in the world that are preparing for spring now (maybe my Australian friends are cheering now, or just anyone who still has a few blooming flowers around in their part of the world). It will still be a very detailed, enjoyable class full of demos, and I’m looking forward to filming it! Wildflowers are amazing and fun to sketch, and at the very least you’ll be prepared for the next summer if you start practicing now. 😉

Talking about practice, another announcement: the next run-through of my Sketching Fundamentals class will start on September 26. This one is a foundational online drawing course. This version of the course offers you a complete introduction to basic drawing techniques, and more importantly 8 weeks of structured assignments and individual feedback from me. If you want to get a solid foundation for your drawing skills and get better at sketching and visual journaling, this is the course for you. Every participant from the last run-through has made huge leaps in their drawing skills during our time together and has told me that the detailed email feedback has made a big change for them.

Learn more about the class itself here: https://juliabausenhardt.com/sketching-fundamentals-class-is-out-now/
Or sign up here: Sketching Fundamentals course

I will offer the class with feedback again next year if this doesn’t fit your schedule now, and of course you can always take the version without individual feedback.

I’ll wrap up here, although I haven’t even started talking about the state of nature over here (yellowed and dried out crops and trees everywhere – drought in large areas of Europe, dried out rivers, dying forests – it is heartbreaking and devastating). I will share more thoughts and sketches in the upcoming weeks, if the filming allows for it – how the climate crisis changes how I make art, how I live. All of this is a process still very much in flux – maybe you have thoughts (or worries) about this as well?

Also stay tuned for the illustration big project I just finished before my summer break! I hope I can start to review my material and put together a post and a video about this at some point. I’ve also read so many interesting books, let me know if you would like to see a few book recommendations/reviews here from time to time.

Aaah, there’s so much to tell and do. I’ve missed you all! I’m looking forward to sharing all that’s on my mind and more – but, step for step!