You are, in a way, what you draw. So I’m mindful of how subjects help or hinder my mood.

After a winter of studying wispy, graphite trees, I started to feel my mood turn graphite-grey too. I needed to think about the spring. Fresh greens and bright yellows!

Though we may be largely indoors, the sunlight and birds outside the window shout, “It’s spring!” And since woodland walks are off the cards, I can draw from the imagination – or photos – instead. Spring can spring in the mind.

When I dug this picture out from a pile the other day it was a bald, February watercolour . So I spruced up the branches with blossom and new leaves and walked away feeling notably happier.

And that’s something I love about art. It can take your mood on journeys. Like dreams that you can steer.

If we need cheering we…

Today I taught my son about clouds. In this paused world, it seemed a useful life skill to take notice of the ever-changing backdrop that is the sky.

Clouds are landscapes in motion. They can alter one’s mood, inspire creativity, nurture mindfulness and foretell weather patterns. Yet they escape our notice daily

In the U.K. we now must stay home. While my partner, an EMT, is out in his ambulance, I am now Mum School. So I dug out nature books and duly bored my son with diagrams and facts about cirrus clouds and cumulonimbus till he begged me to let him get to the part where he could paint a thunderstorm. I passed him yellow paint for the lightning.

“Lightning is purple,” he corrected me. Good point. In fact, the sky is full of an extraordinary array of colours. It’s a wonder any of…