A sense of place

If you aren't already aware, we are away on holiday in Spain at the moment! The weather has been beautiful and the Mediterranean colours are so vibrant from the ever shifting blues of the sea to the brilliant pops of colour from trailing bourgainvillea and the rich earthy tones of terracotta tiles. Taking a bit of time out, doing lots of walking and spending more time outdoors has given me a fresh appreciation of place. It has got me thinking about how we can translate the colours, textures and shapes of our local environment in to our artwork. Our environment is a rich source of inspiration - whether urban, coastal or rural and we are surrounded by patterns every day. The clothes that we wear, shop displays, magazines, wallpaper, tiles, the flowers in the garden....the list is endless!

So, while I have been away I have been trying to be more purposeful in using that inspiration in my mini sketchbook. I am not trying to sketch or represent the scenery....I want to see how I can capture a sense of place through an abstract use of colour, shape and texture. It has been really interesting and helped me to be more present, focusing in on details. For example, when we were out walking round a nearby port yesterday, lots of people were taking photos of the sea but I got really excited about these coils of rope :)

Let me share a few examples of how this has translated in to my mini sketchbook. I don't have many supplies with me but, in fact, that is quite helpful as I am not overwhelmed by a choice of materials. I have dyed some papers with coffee, got a small pack of neocolour II crayons, a glue stick and a few small tubes of acrylic paint and that seems to be perfectly fine for making simple abstracts.

Here, for example, I was inspired by the beautiful turquoises and crystal blues of the reservoir in the picture above, with the white mark making evoking the light reflecting off the water. I cut some organic shapes from the coffee dyed papers as a nod to the rocks and shoreline around the water. No one needs to have seen the inspiration source but I love how it informed the shapes and colours on this small page.

Here is a picture of rocky coastline - I was particularly drawn to the textures of the rocks and the variation of colours in the sea.

My abstract is a bit more literal than the one above with the rock forms and sea more easily identifiable. It was fun to try creating some sense of movement in the 'water' and to use scribbles and crayons to convey the textures of the rocks. Again, this is not attempting to be a representative image - I have extrapolated the features that most interested me and tried to find ways of conveying them with acrylics and ink.

On this visit, I have found the textures of rocks and stones particularly interesting - the variations in colours, the shadows between them, their irregular, organic shapes. I think that I will probably do more with this theme on my return home and can imagine that adding stitched details will also be a great way of creating textures.

As my pages have got more abstract, these stones are increasingly showing up as arches and ovals....I like to stretch the initial inspiration in to something much looser.

Here I was playing with the earth tones and areas of light and dark - I particularly like the translucent effect of the coffee stained tissue paper :)

We have more trips still to come while we are here so I am looking forward to capturing more textures and shapes to spark future makes. Of course, the result of all this exploration is that my photo feed is packed with random images and the only one of me and Mr G is one that he took :)

We are back next week but in the meantime I hope that you have a look around to find something that can spark your next make. I would love to hear/see where you look for inspiration!

Wishing you sunshine and painty days!