A cozy, practical roundtable on how fall’s shift in color, light, and rhythm shapes creative work across music, writing, visual art, and photography. The crew shares tools like mood boards, style codes, equinox rituals, and adjusted schedules to harness autumn’s warmth and shorter days—with genre pivots (hello, horror), slower meditative pacing, and a seasonal framework of plan/plant/nurture/harvest to move projects forward.

Greg
00:00 - 00:27
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative WorkHour Podcast. Today is episode 67 and in the room today you've got myself, Greg, we've got Alessandra, Melanie, Bailey, Shadows Pub, Hillary, Bobby B, and Devon. And today's question is inspired by the time of year, and that is, how does the change of season affect your creative work? We've got the fall colors coming with the falling leaves.

Greg
00:27 - 00:46
We're gonna have snowy, frosty landscapes, bare trees, visions of coming indoors to warm log fires and wooden cabins, hearty soups and stews, and painting all the colors of the rainbow. So how does the change of season affect your creative work, Alessandra?

Alessandra
00:46 - 01:12
Well, this past weekend, Dr. Melanie and I were meeting another Creative Work Hour crew member, Gretchen, at a thing called Creator Camp. And it was held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, early October. So this time of year, the New England colors are all coming out so vibrant. And they were coming out on our way north from New York City and Nashua, getting to Portsmouth.

Alessandra
01:12 - 01:40
But on our way back home, they were just supercharged. And there's something about the palette of autumn colors that is particularly grounding, but it is also particularly inspiring. You see a lot of oranges and reds and yellows. And orange in particular, across cultures throughout the world, orange is orientated as the color of creativity.

Alessandra
01:40 - 02:14
It brings an energy and a warmth to creative work in that you can have a project that's gone cold and something as simple as a change of season can reignite the energy that you have to devote to that project. Or maybe one that's kind of been in the ideation stage actually gets a fire set under it so that you can get it started. And that is the beauty of the color of creativity. Yeah, the warmth.

Alessandra
02:14 - 02:34
Yeah, the beauty of creativity and the color of creativity. And you see it across logos. all across Western civilizations, Eastern civilizations, even Devon works for a company that's in app development and their color is orange for creativity. Yeah.

Alessandra
02:34 - 02:48
So you see it in all kinds of places. And it could be that the start of a season, like now, when we're recording this episode, can say, you know what? The summer is done. The weather has changed.

Alessandra
02:49 - 03:10
It is fill in the blank, whatever that season is for you in your own creative work. But this could be a time where you're going to get started something so that you've given yourself a chance to finish it by the end of the year. I'm going to hand it off to Dr. Melanie first. She wears this uber cool watch when we were at creative camp.

Alessandra
03:10 - 03:30
People were falling over, taking notice of this massive watch that she wears that has this vibrant orange face to it. So Dr. Melanie, how is it for you? How does the change in seasons, maybe even specifically, how does the change of seasons into fall affect your creativity?

Dr Melonie
03:30 - 03:46
Well, my toenails are orange also, and pretty much always have been. And I was thinking about that. I mean, because of the driving, I was actually outside. So the urban versus the slightly more rural experience of change of seasons.

Dr Melonie
03:46 - 04:22
It's different, you know, but this season's been so nicely drawn out, this change, you know, it's like very slow. It's like, oh, it's been about two weeks since I've, three, four weeks since I had air conditioning on and now, you know, a fan, but a little blanky at night. And it's like this, um, in between period where you get to sort of watch things, think about things and watch things that have gone by and evaluate. Sort of like a, it's not really meditation, like maybe a dream state, I don't know.

Dr Melonie
04:22 - 04:38
Anyway, that's this year because it hasn't been abrupt and because I've had some time to do that. So it's been kind of cool. So it lets me get a big picture and big picture is always good for my creativity, you know, not just minute picture.

Alessandra
04:38 - 04:49
And is there anything that you're going to start or finish here that you've got like a full season laid out before you?

Dr Melonie
04:49 - 05:11
Well, I got this prize of a microphone. So maybe I'm going to try and figure out how to use it. And I was, what I worked on yesterday a little was the various channels I have ideas for. So when I did photography, I used to do a lot of portraits, not only, but a majority.

Dr Melonie
05:11 - 05:21
And I liked the idea of interviewing people. So that's the project that's sort of, the new project that's sort of tootling around in my head.

Alessandra
05:21 - 05:38
That sounds really interesting because when people meet you in the here and now, they'll know you as a doctor. What they don't know is that you've got an equal weight of education, training, and experience as an artist.

Dr Melonie
05:39 - 05:44
Yeah, it was almost more for a while.

Alessandra
05:44 - 05:58
Well, we're really looking forward to what you're going to do. And of course, we're here for you. If you want to toy with it, we can always get on a call and toy with how to get that microphone working. I mean, that's what we do.

Alessandra
05:58 - 06:00
We help each other.

Greg
06:00 - 06:31
thanks dr melanie that's really interesting and you know you talked about training as an artist and it makes me think about shadows and her artwork and alessandra was talking about the four colors and the oranges and i notice in today's echo i know you can't see this on the screen but there's some oranges And I'm not sure what they are. They're almost like, I know they're not hammocks, but they almost look a little bit like orange hammocks. But Shadows, does the change of season affect your creative work when it comes to the colors that you work with, doing your echoes and things like that?

Shadows Pub
06:31 - 06:39
Not really. And those are canopies that are in that picture. Because that would be the word for today is canopy.

Greg
06:41 - 06:49
I was just going to say that. Honestly, I really was. How do you pick the colors? I know you've covered this before, but how do you actually decide?

Greg
06:50 - 06:56
Is it more of an object or a word and then the colors come or do the colors come earlier on?

Shadows Pub
06:56 - 07:11
Actually, it's driven mostly by the prompt that I have given to chat GPT that gives me a criteria for possible prompts for the image. It also includes the type of colors that should be used. And then I decide from there.

Alessandra
07:11 - 07:33
So in your work with AI as one of your, one of your paint brushes for your daily echoes work, are you prompting AI to help you with prompting? Yeah. And as an artist, how has that changed? Do you feel like you're getting better at prompting for prompting?

Shadows Pub
07:33 - 07:52
Yeah, to a point. And when it comes to the color choices, to some extent, Mid Journey has a thing that they call mood boards. So I actually can go into my past images, select color palettes that I want to put together and create a mood board out of it so that it gives me a whole new palette.

Alessandra
07:53 - 07:56
Wow. And did you do that for this?

Shadows Pub
07:56 - 08:09
There's always at least one if not two mood boards included and involved in my image. And then they also have style codes that get added into it. So it's multiple layers.

Alessandra
08:10 - 08:31
It's such beautiful work. And I want to make sure that because we reference in our work here on the podcast, we reference the Daily Echoes. So Shadows, tell us where people can find your work and if they want to have the work come to them in their email, what they might do.

Shadows Pub
08:31 - 08:34
They can visit my GoBranch room and they can subscribe while they're in the room.

Greg
08:35 - 08:41
How would we find that room, Shadow? What's the easy way to find a way there if someone's listening and wants to go to the GoBranch?

Shadows Pub
08:41 - 08:46
Yeah, that's not an easy one. I'd have to send it to you to put in the show notes.

Greg
08:46 - 08:54
We can certainly do that. That would be a great addition. Yeah. And maybe if they want to, do you still have the website where they can go and look at the past echoes as well?

Shadows Pub
08:55 - 08:58
That's currently embedded into the Goldbranch Room.

Greg
08:59 - 08:59
I haven't

Shadows Pub
08:59 - 09:00
put it into the website yet.

Greg
09:01 - 09:04
Very cool. Very cool. We'll look for that in the show notes. That'll be coming.

Greg
09:04 - 09:15
That'll be absolutely awesome. Bailey, how about you? How does the change of season affect your creative work? Musically, does it affect your creative work as well, the change of seasons?

Bailey
09:16 - 09:36
It does. I find that the music that I play is often like more meditative, a little bit slower and I guess a little bit less technically demanding, although that's not always true. But I guess really it affects like what I create. So like my compositions, it's like more colorful and like my writing.

Bailey
09:36 - 10:07
I find that what I make is often like a mixture of my experience and like the art and like movies and TV and books that I like digest. So, I guess during this time, it really affects like what I'm intaking. I'm inside more, I'm reading more, like reading like poetry more. So I find that it really like affects what I make because of my activity and like what I'm like taking in.

Bailey
10:08 - 10:20
So yeah I think that overall I output more and it's a lot more like slow and like meditative and I guess more like internal. So yeah I think that that's like the biggest way.

Greg
10:21 - 10:26
Do you have a phase or a season for your creativity? Does one season influence you more than another?

Bailey
10:26 - 10:35
It used to be fall. I love the fall. I actually go outside more in the fall and winter than I do in the summer sometimes. I always do one really big, long winter hike.

Bailey
10:36 - 10:49
But yeah, I think fall, just because it's slower and I'm more indoors. And overall, I think it slows me down enough that I can think slower about what I do, which gives me a better picture of what I'm experiencing.

Greg
10:49 - 10:55
Makes sense. Thanks, Shadows. Bobby, how about you? How does a change of season affect your creative work?

Bobby. B
10:55 - 11:28
Where I live in Southern California, we don't get the dramatic changes in seasons along the ocean. But they're there, and so it does have some effect, which is also why I love all the hiking that I do, and being up in the mountains, because that's all more visible there. And I do find myself having a different type of creativity. So I almost yearn to be up there, at least as much as I can, to get that influence, because it takes a little effort to go find it, but the reward is all worthwhile.

Bobby. B
11:29 - 12:03
Do you have a favorite season for your creativity? I would definitely say the fall has the biggest influence watching, you know, the color changes and, you know, the trees losing their leaves and the, especially fall into some case, also spring because the temperature swings can be much greater. And if I'm out doing like a 10 to 15 mile hike, you know, I'll go through a range of layers of clothing and, and, and change of how the air feels and all that. So yeah, definitely, that's part of the fall change.

Greg
12:04 - 12:12
Thanks Bobby. I'm going to circle back because I should have asked this earlier of other people, but Alessandra, do you have a favorite season for your creativity?

Alessandra
12:13 - 12:27
I totally love fall. Yeah, yeah. And I do because the colors that are part of my personal wardrobe just works with my strawberry blonde blue-eyed coloring. I've always loved that.

Alessandra
12:27 - 12:56
When I was designing for Laura Ashley, I loved being able to wear all the sweatery things and all the scarves. In the summertime, I grew up in Texas, and actually the world's largest location for Laura Ashley and Laura Ashley Home was not in England, it was in Dallas, Texas. And I have a feeling it had to do with the cost of real estate. But I just couldn't wear all the scarves and the things in the summertime.

Alessandra
12:56 - 13:16
So I would just line up this part of my closet with all of those things because I just find it inspiring that when you're wearing colors that resonate with your creativity, I think it just gives you a bit more energy and it rubs off on other people and they see you coming. And it's like, Yeah. Wow.

Alessandra
13:16 - 13:27
It is fall, isn't it? You know, but there's a lot to be said for all the goodies you get to wear in winter as well. But yeah, I'm an autumn girl. Dr.

Greg
13:27 - 13:30
Mullen, how about you? What was your favorite season? Did you have one?

Dr Melonie
13:30 - 13:49
I like the change, whichever change it is. It's kind of hopeful and like this sort of little platform space where you can feel, you know, days go by, day by day, but it stops that. It's sort of like a limbo play, so I don't care which season it is.

Greg
13:50 - 13:52
Thanks, Mel. Shadow, do you have a favorite season?

Shadows Pub
13:53 - 13:59
Not really, other than the time of year when it gets really late, really early, because I'm up early.

Greg
13:59 - 14:06
You're a morning owl. Morning, not a night owl. What would the opposite of a night owl? A morning bird,

Dr Melonie
14:06 - 14:06
I guess.

Greg
14:06 - 14:07
Is it a

Dr Melonie
14:07 - 14:07
lark?

Greg
14:08 - 14:09
Probably more like

Dr Melonie
14:09 - 14:09
cat

Greg
14:09 - 14:09
controlled.

Dr Melonie
14:10 - 14:11
A morning person.

Greg
14:11 - 14:18
Yes, Juliet, tis the lark. morning lark. The early bird catches the worm. I know that much.

Greg
14:18 - 14:24
Maybe it's the lark that catches the worm. How about you, Devon? How does the change of season affect your creative work?

Devin
14:25 - 14:47
Well, to break the fourth wall for a moment and speak to our listeners, aren't you glad you listened to this podcast so that you could get the in-depth autumnal color analysis? As for me, yes. Autumn is my favorite season for creativity, for everything. It's just the best.

Devin
14:47 - 15:12
And it contains my favorite holiday, which is Halloween. And Halloween is great because it's all about my favorite genre, which is horror. And so my creativity does a hard pivot as we get closer to Halloween, because for whatever reason, You know, I've talked about how I have these different interests. I'll switch to different creative outlets constantly.

Devin
15:13 - 15:44
And when it gets to be autumn, and we're talking about Halloween, and then there's witches and skeletons everywhere, I want to write fiction. That's suddenly, I feel that autumn chill, and I see all these October Halloween decorations, and I want to write horror fiction. Whether it's short stories or my poor old, long-suffering, 18-year-old, half-finished novel, I want to write horror fiction. So yeah, yeah, the fall has a huge impact on my creativity, as do all the other seasons.

Devin
15:44 - 15:53
So when it comes to be hard winter, I may pivot away to something else. But for now, yeah, we're gonna be all about the horror for a little bit longer.

Greg
15:54 - 15:59
When was Bruce created? Was that created in the fall season? Yes,

Devin
15:59 - 16:04
I believe it was. Thank you for remembering, Greg. One of my short stories.

Greg
16:04 - 16:07
You want to give a shameless plug for Bruce?

Devin
16:08 - 16:27
Sure, you can find it on Amazon. It's an anthology of short stories published by a Toronto-based writers group. And it's a, yeah, it's a quick, it's the first story in the anthology. It's a quick read and it'll make you think twice before moving in next to a nuclear reactor.

Devin
16:27 - 16:29
I'll just leave it at that.

Greg
16:29 - 16:38
Yeah. I think I would think twice about moving into a next door to a nuclear reactor. Hilary, how about you? How does the change of season affect your creative work?

Hillary
16:38 - 17:08
Thank you, Greg. The changes of season and how they affect my creative work. As someone who tries to, on a spiritual level, honor and acknowledge the change of seasons, things such as the solstice and the equinox, it helps you stay in tune with the natural cycles of life. And so you can kind of think of, you know, projects and plans through the seasons.

Hillary
17:08 - 17:28
In the winter, you are planning your plan. In the spring, you are planting your plan, tilling the soil, getting things ready. In the summer, you nurture it and you let it go through its growth phase. And so then in the fall, it's time to harvest.

Hillary
17:29 - 17:39
And you can kind of reflect your progress and process into that. Where are you? Especially when you're stuck on something. What are you trying to do?

Hillary
17:39 - 17:55
Are you stuck planting? Are you still stuck planting? Does it just need some fertilizer and to be left alone? And, you know, you can really in tune, you know, what you're working on with where in the cycle is it.

Hillary
17:55 - 18:23
And I can help get over humps when you over evaluate and so for my creative projects. I can definitely kind of look at one that's been stuck on the back burner and where is it and what does it need? I'm not sure how much it affects like the particular project I'm on. I'd say there's, I guess my house plants.

Hillary
18:24 - 18:37
I do a lot with house plants, but I know not to mess with them too much in the middle of winter. They don't like to be repotted in the middle of winter. They're not going through a growth phase. They want to sit down.

Hillary
18:37 - 19:04
They want to relax. That's their downtime. But that's where I plan and get ready to execute in the spring when the plants are happy and they're ready to take movement and be rehomed And you can do all kinds of fun stuff with them then because they're going to get the nutrients from the sun to support such a change of environment.

Hillary
19:04 - 19:10
Certain arts and crafts. Yeah. How much time do you have left in the day? When does the sun go down?

Hillary
19:10 - 19:34
You know, that can affect just the energy level to produce anything. I got to say when it gets darker and darker earlier and earlier, It's harder for me to push later into the evening to create something that, you know, just needs the time. So I think that's one of the major factors of how the season affects my creative work.

Alessandra
19:35 - 19:59
Well, I love that, Hilary, because your example is just so good about don't mess with the plants in the wintertime. Don't get cute, because that's not the time for it. I remember when I was in university in music conservatory. I would get really panicked in the fall when it would be getting late.

Alessandra
19:59 - 20:22
It would get dark earlier and earlier. I'd be like, oh my God, I don't want to be walking over to the music practice rooms in the dark. I don't want to do that. So it would make me pull things together and how can I do more with less because the sunlight is becoming a scarcer resource.

Alessandra
20:22 - 20:40
So I really loved how you talked about that. Like, how can we care for ourselves with less resource of sunlight in the change of season? Because that's energy and energy affects the creative work. So I really love that example that you gave us.

Alessandra
20:40 - 20:40
Thank

Hillary
20:41 - 20:48
you. I love how you just tied in that the sun is a resource. That's it is absolutely a resource for our creative endeavors

Greg
20:49 - 21:33
i really love the fall i think it goes back to my days being an upholsterer, i'm the fall colors and autumn colors burnt oranges brown greens earth tones autumn tones, Those colors go with a multitude of things and they're so beautiful. I don't like the summer, it's been a hot summer for me with my air conditioning, so I'm looking forward to the colder nights and I mentioned earlier, you know, the hardy skews, the visions of log cabins and painting and things like that i think i'm going to do some coloring and i think that my writing improves in the colder weather as well it becomes more wholesome maybe it's that stick to your ribs food that does stick to your ribs writing as well if that's a thing i don't know but pretty good discussion alessandra

Alessandra
21:34 - 22:07
Well, it is a really good discussion. And one of the things that, that, you know, I said with Melanie and Gretchen and I were all at Creator Camp together this last week, and one of the things that I wanted to, that occurred to me, you know, to use energy of our being together, that one, we're putting this episode out to the world to find other creatives that are interested in the kinds of things that we are. And we have a rhythm of what we do here, how we start, how we flow through the episode, and how we end.

Alessandra
22:07 - 22:47
But I was going to add a little something that won't really play in the audio of the show. But, and you're not gonna find it online, but just for us chickens here, to have it in our own private channel to put with when the episode comes out, I wanna get a screenshot of us, and I'm gonna work with it in AI, and see what kind of cute thing I might come up with, so that, because all of our backgrounds are different, our lining is all different, and we've all seen like screenshots of, Zoom rooms before, blah, blah de blah. Boring.

Alessandra
22:47 - 23:11
But I thought I would grab a screenshot of us and put it through AI and see what kind of fun thing we could come up with. And then we can tie that at some point, if we all agree, because that's a little bit how we roll here. If we think it's cute and helpful, then we'll put that image into our show notes so you can see the spirit of the people that were here today to make the episode. So, all right.

Alessandra
23:11 - 23:19
So here we go. It's going to take me longer because, you know, I've got one hand that really works well and the other one takes a minute. All right. Give me a sec.

Alessandra
23:19 - 23:25
Three and a two and a one. I know the listeners at home are loving this. There we go. Got it.

Alessandra
23:25 - 23:32
Okay. So look in your show notes and if the crew is like, yes, it's cute. We like it. Add it.

Alessandra
23:32 - 23:37
Then it will be added. Okay. Perfect. I was going to call on, because I saw your hand, Bobby.

Alessandra
23:37 - 23:38
So I was going to call on you.

Bobby. B
23:38 - 23:57
Yeah, guys. Thankfully, your comments have reminded me of something really dear to my heart. I connect deeply, directly with nature. And so the fall equinox, while not a seasonal change, essentially the Earth's doing what it wants to do, and the summer, but the fall is a huge, huge moment for me.

Bobby. B
23:58 - 24:34
It's that transition from days getting shorter to days getting longer. My friends and I generally celebrate by staying up all night. It is a complete shift, a transition point for me as the newness of the winter season and its potential just really resets my mindset. I usually put together a 10-day plan from that point going to the accepted calendar and the start of the accepted calendar year.

Bobby. B
24:34 - 24:41
But my year starts at winter equinox and as does my creative evolution.

Alessandra
24:42 - 24:47
Very cool. The time changes, the times are changing. And Greg, I have to ask you, what time is it?

Greg
24:47 - 24:59
It's that time again. You've wasted some perfectly good time listening to the Creative Work Hour podcast when you could have been doing something else. But how about you? How does the change of season affect your creative work?

Greg
25:00 - 25:08
Do you have a favorite season that you're more creative in? Let us know. We'd be interested to know that. Subscribe wherever you listen to the podcast and give us a thumbs up.

Greg
25:08 - 25:12
It always helps. Come back next week and we'll have another discussion.