Hi there! My name is Katrina Hadnot and I’m the heart and soul behind Lindale Studios–a studio dedicated to helping brands find their colors, educating about color and color theory, and creating hand-painted pieces and styling mats in order to elevate a brand’s styling and photos.

A LITTLE INTRO…

Currently, I live in Japan with my family due to my husband’s job, but we are from the Washington DC area. We have three girls all in elementary school), and are very thankful for the opportunity to travel with them. The ages of my kids are 10, 8, and 5.

I’m very passionate about bringing art and creativity into the everyday parts of life.

I think it should be simple, inexpensive, and the beauty all around us despite the hard should be seen by people of all ages. I wanted to share a little about a way that I took an opportunity for creative play with my girls.

 

WE DECIDED TO TRAVEL DURING A FREE WEEKEND…

 

We decided that during their free weekend over a school holiday, we would fly to Osaka, Japan. We wanted to first take them to Universal Studios Japan, but then we wanted to take them into and all around Osaka. Not going to lie, I was more excited about seeing Osaka than Universal, but the latter was pretty fun!

 

Traveling with THREE GIRLS…

As you can imagine, traveling with three kids is not for the faint of heart…even though my kids are pretty good with travel after living and walking all over Europe. However, sometimes the views and sites aren’t ALWAYS to their liking.

Let me tell you, 2 out of 3 love climbing walls, digging in the dirt, and yes poke each other with sticks. Please don’t take the vision of three little girls in ruffled pink dresses and run with this…🤣.

 

IT ALL STARTED WITH MY NEED FOR REST AND TO SPARK CREATIVITY

I needed to enjoy something artistic that wasn’t necessarily apart of “work.” Something that would give me brain space, that would help me “tune out the hard” and help me get back to doing what I love without the pressures of marketing, etc.

I also wanted my girls to participate.

We went to Osaka Castle and not only was the castle beautiful, the weather was perfect–sunny with a breeze!

The girls were tired of walking, so I found some shaded steps and said “hey guys, do you want to paint for a bit?”

 

 

WHAT I BROUGHT:

There are some things I’m learning to take with me that are light and easy, cheap, and easy to replace.

• Watercolors (Kid set!)
• Cheap and Small Notebooks from 7/11
• Color Pencils

We all started to sketch, draw something “just because we wanted to” or use our surroundings as inspiration to draw something outside of what we could have thought up in our head.

HOW DID IT HELP ME AND MY KIDS?

We were all calm, talked about the colors us, and encouraged each other.  You could tell we all needed to just be outside but have the freedom to just do something that didn’t require following directions, and included rest, and being together. It was soooo sweet. They painted and chatted for 45 minutes…ALL OF THEM. One of them told me it was better than playing Nintendo switch (Mom is a winner!)

My girls all said yes, because…

1. We were in a new place but were going to do something familiar
2. They already know how to use watercolors (Tip! These were very simple sets…nothing expensive or “spectacular!”
3. We had a little surprise in the middle of the day

 

I quickly had them sit with me, and gave them each a watercolor, set out the pencils, and poured some water in the “lid side” of the watercolor sets. It was perfect. I tried not to talk too much, and to just let them sit, and color, paint, and draw.

The first picture is of my oldest daughter. She tried to draw the building that we were looking at but then ended up putting her own spin on in. The second picture is from my middle daughter who just had fun with it and drew a simple tree full of “cherry blossoms” because we were in Japan. My third daughter talked about a lot of things, and drew a lot of things:) Ha!

I got to just sketch a building for fun, and pull colors out of the greens and changing leaves that I saw.

 

. .

 

WHAT DID WE LEARN?

• Your sketch or painting doesn’t need to look “ perfect” or exactly what you see…that’s what photos are for.

To be honest, one of my girls got frustrated about 5 minutes in because her drawing didn’t look like the “real thing.” I reminded her that is she wanted it to look “perfect” than she should just take a photo.I encouraged her to turn it into something that inspired her, and I just left her alone. Even though she didn’t want to take my suggestions at the time, she kept working and eventually her solemn face turned to a smile.

• You aren’t competing against anyone. This is for your heart and soul to rest.

My other child started to draw the tree, which turned into a tree full of flowers instead of leaves. We talked about the colors of the leaves and how they are changing. This girl who is constantly downing herself and her abilities, suddenly forgot about the world around her, and stopped caring if the flowers were supossed to be leaves.

• There are no rules. I know that’s hard for some, but life already has a lot of those…let’s not bring it to the sketchbook:)

It was so freeing to just sit there and sketch and “pull colors” that I saw.

 

   

I know things like this may not always be helpful for everyone. It was helpful for my heart and soul to stop and paint with my three girls. Afterwards I had more energy, I was happier, and my mind was so excited for my work, that I began to sit down and write about it.

Need a way to bring creative play into your life, or still convinced it’s not necessary? Click here for a FREE GUIDE so you can get your hands on suggested supplies and more!

If you try anything, let me know! Contact me or message me on Instagram! I’m all ears.

It’s gonna be great:)

Katrina

LINDALE STUDIOS

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