With pages filled with darting kingfishers, winter dens and the inner lives of trees, Emma Carlisle’s expressively illustrated picture books invite us to slow down and pay closer attention to our environment. Who better, then, to guide us through the mindful practice of observational painting outdoors?
As spring brings welcome colour back into the landscape, we spoke with Emma in her Devon studio about the healing power of creating art in nature, battling creative burnout, and the process of turning initial sketches into published picture books.
“The best thing I ever did was go outside with a sketchbook and draw,” says artist and award-winning children’s book creator, Emma Carlisle. “It changed my life.”
In 2018, while Emma’s early career in picture books appeared to be flourishing, below the surface, she was struggling. “I did an MA in children's book illustration at Cambridge, and when I graduated, I got a publishing deal,” she recalls. “My work was being celebrated, but the more I did, the less I felt connected to it. I just didn't love what I was making anymore, and my mental health suffered." After reaching burnout, Emma took drastic action – leaving her agent, closing her Etsy shop and selling her kiln.
“I asked myself, ‘When was the last time you were content creatively?’, and I remembered this six-week on-location drawing project I did at university where I went to London Zoo and sat and drew in the giraffe house – and that felt like the last time I'd been happy with my work.”
Natural healing
Feeling reenergised, Emma set herself a new project: drawing on location, outdoors, for six weeks. “I lived by the sea in Plymouth at the time,” she says, “and I would take my sketchbook and art supplies on a walk along the coast path, or go up onto Dartmoor, and just capture what was in front of me.”
Documenting each drawing on her increasingly popular Instagram account, the growth in Emma’s work was clear to see. “There was no teacher grading me at the end of it; it was just me doing it for myself, which felt great,” she says. After six weeks, she felt “so much healthier, mentally and physically”, that she decided to keep going for another six months. By 2020, picture book offers were rolling in once more, and she hasn’t looked back since.
So what was it about the act of making art outdoors that Emma found so healing? “I think what helped with my recovery was a combination of going outside and walking in nature, but also slowing down and learning new, mindful skills of close observation and experimental mark-making.”
A playful approach
This element of experimental play is central to Emma’s practice. “It’s how I get the best out of my materials,” she says. From thick daubs of gouache mixed directly on the page to washes of ink with dynamic dabs of pastel and pencil layered over the top, Emma’s work “is all mixed media,” revelling in celebratory use of colour and rejection of restrictive “rules”.
With big skies and British wildlife amongst her favourite subjects, it’s no surprise that Emma’s lively picture books are full of landscapes, animals and their habitats. And it’s her regular observational drawing habit that helps Emma to capture them so faithfully.
Artistic observations
“During lockdown, I started looking closely at my local trees for the first time,” she says. “My picture book, What Do You See When You Look At a Tree? grew organically from the drawings I made in my sketchbooks on those daily walks.” Similarly, when Emma was finding her flow with her book, Time Runs Like a River, she “went and sat by the River Dart and drew and drew” – with those observational drawings forming the “core of the book”.
But it’s not only untouched nature that catches Emma’s artistic eye: “I love drawing outdoors when human life is evident in a landscape. It might be swimmers on a beach, a house on a hill, a village, or even just a simple structure, such as fencing. I like it when you can see that someone's been there; it adds a narrative element.”
When the camera she set up in her back garden to capture birds inadvertently filmed her partner’s dad doing some gardening, Emma was delighted. “He didn't realise the camera was there, which I suppose is a bit cheeky, but it made for great free drawing-from-life!” she laughs.
With her next nature-inspired picture book in the works, Emma’s content with the direction she’s travelling in. “It feels really full-circle, getting to experience the outdoors and then bring it back into the studio and into a picture book. It’s like the journey is complete.”
Keen to give drawing outdoors a go? Discover Emma’s top tips for getting started, and watch her free tutorials on how to make a mixed media artwork using ink and gouache.
