Notes on Inspiration ✨

What's been inspiring me this week

Hello & Happy Friday! After last Friday’s post, I’ve continued to have a creative week, feeling inspired with lots of new ideas. But as often happens (especially after a period of creative block) there’s now more ideas than time to execute them. So I thought I’d share some of my ideas here so I can look back at them next time I’m stuck.

From my Notebook

I have a notebook on my desk where I scribble down any quick thoughts and ideas. There’s often not much context to these notes so its fun to come back to them later on and try and decipher what I meant at the time. I thought it would be fun to share some of these with you in case they might inspire you too, so here’s a few from this week:

• Seed pods/ seed heads

• Line work/ Mark making - different materials and textures

• Curled tendrils

• COLOUR

• Fill the page

• Painting + Collage

I’ll keep referring back to these over the next few weeks and hopefully share what they turn in to next month.

Browsing my Reference Books

I have a lovely collection of books on art and nature, and often the ones I’ve had for longer get neglected. So I’ve started to pull one off the shelf every now and then, and flick through it for ideas and inspiration from the images inside. I’m going to share some of the pages that are inspiring me - to keep me accountable and make sure I actually use the ideas in my own work, and in case they provide some inspiration for you too.

This week the book was The Golden Age of Botanical Art - Martyn Rix, Kew Publishing. This was one of the first art/nature books I got, probably around 5 years ago now and I haven’t looked at it properly in a few years. Its fun to see how pages and images that didn’t interest me previously, are now really inspiring as my tastes and interests have changed. Here are my my current favourite pages:

1. Euphorbia Dendroides with a female Emperor moth and a caterpillar, by Jacopo Ligozzi, c. 1580

   I love the composition of this one - the way there’s a section in the middle that’s quite full/tight, and then some looser, delicate elements trailing down. I also love the addition of the moth and the caterpillar.

2. Engravings from the Hortus Eystettensis, c. 1613

   The line work and shading in these is is really satisfying, and I love how they all have a central point, with all of the leaves, roots and flowers coming out from that point.

3. Passiflora engraving, originally painted by Georg Dionysius Ehret, c. 1760

   This picture doesn’t do it justice but the brush marks and textures in this one are beautiful. And I always love when a botanical piece has those swirling tendrils.

4. Mutisia Clematis, painted by Salvador Rizo Blanco

   This one really brings together all of the things I’ve been enjoying lately - it has the combination of flowers and seed heads, it has a centre point and then fills the page, and it has the twisted tendrils too.

(Those scribbled notes are making more sense now!)

More sparks of Inspiration:

• This video by Helen Wells - ‘Journey through a lifetime of sketchbooks’.
  Even just the opening clips of all the sketchbooks laid out on the floor! Just beautiful.

  “There’s a lovely saying about planting a tree, which I think is very applicable to a sketchbook practice. And the saying is the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the second best time to plant a tree is today. And I think that about sketchbooks. So if you didn’t start a sketchbook practice 20 years ago, then today’s the day.”

• I’ve re-joined Emma Carlisle’s Patreon after a few months away, and I’m really enjoying her Process and Development videos and sketchbook tours.

• This Jackson’s Art interview with Jo Rance. I’ve been inspired by Jo’s gorgeous work for ages now, and always love seeing a new piece of hers pop up in feed. This interview with her talking about her process and inspirations is fascinating - I especially love how she talks about building up a painting like a jigsaw puzzle, and taking artistic license to figure out which elements need to be included.

• I haven’t watched this one all the way through yet, but I’ve saved this video sharing 10 artists to follow on Youtube. I’ve been looking for more artists to follow as I love to have art videos on while I work, so I’m excited to see what I can find here.

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