From Field & Forest offers an artist’s year in paint and pen, a book of flora and fauna from the fields and forests surrounding the artist’s home. In this mindful art journal, Anna celebrates the changing of the seasons, the blossoming of flowers and the ripening of fruit.
Respect space of wildlife (don’t use flash photography nor use magnifying glasses, which can harm creatures in sunlight). Don’t play birdsong, as this can confuse and attract predators.
For art, use vegan watercolour brushes and paints and recycled art paper. For drawing, use recycled pencils.
Working in watercolour, her illustrations are reproduced in beautiful detail and accompanied by musings and observations of the natural world. Whether drawing wasps feasting on apples (fallen from the orchard) or capturing the cerulean blue of a winter sky, you are sure to be inspired.
Also read From Coast & Cove, which gives more inspiration as Anna and her family move from East Sussex to the Devon seaside. Now she finds inspiration from the ebb and flow of the tide through the year, the flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shore and creatures spotted in the air, on land and in rockpools.
From the haunting cry of the curlew (heard while kayaking along the River Dart) and the iridescent scales and pointed teeth of a hake, to the mussel shells discarded by an oystercatcher and the kelp, wrack and eelgrass strewn along the beach.
About the Author
Anna Koska is a freelance illustrator who specialises in fruit, vegetables and the natural world. She lives on the Devon coast, having spent many years in Sussex. She forest-runs and cycles, and is fervent in her efforts to supply the family with homemade everything.
