A resourceful woman who is almost downright plain can achieve the reputation of a beauty simply by announcing to everybody she meets that she is one. Erte Quote
Tag Archives: inspiration
The Language of Flowers
I thought I would blog about a lovely little book I came across about flowers by Mandy Kirkby illustrated by Katie Tooke. Read more…
What’s to come..
Future posts here we go! I am usually not this organised when it comes to blog posts but I’ll try for a month and see how it goes. I have a huge stack of artists that I want to ‘collect’ and share with you on my blog, hopefully to inspire and give you something interesting to look at that you haven’t seen before. Below are some snippet images to give you an idea about the artists I will post about next so stay tuned.
If this is the first time you have come across my little blog I like to talk about all sorts of artists and not just sticking to one discipline or style.
Inspiring Artists
Betsy Walton
Starting out with spontaneous mark and colour forms, with little expectation of the end result, her paintings reveal themselves through the process of painting; Betsy Walton creates as she paints. Walton’s work is as expressionistic as it is surreal, from the titles she gives each piece to the half drawn figures and cut out geometric pieces of gold leaf overlapping washes of paint. Her work attempts to reach the sublime, delving into the relationship between objects and people and the sense of mystery behind our everyday encounters. Needless to say her colour palettes are beautifully dream-like, evoking feelings of transcendence to the viewer.
‘We can experience the sublime in the same room where we fold the laundry, and perhaps at the same time.’ – Betsy Walton.
Marisa Seguin
Travel, food, and architecture are captured by Marisa Seguin in soft watercolour compositions. Seguin’s illustrations almost look like they are glowing because of her skill in subtly toning her work and the colour combinations she uses. If you take a close look at Seguin’s portfolio of paintings you really start to see her skill in watercolour and the different techniques she incorporates into her work. Reading from one of her many blogs she is inspired by baking, traveling, childhood and reading other blogs! Click on her website to see more of her work.
Jonas Wood
I love it when I come across an artist who completely inspires me and sparks my creative juices! Jonas Wood did just that. I started working on a new design over the weekend and hopefully it will be finished by the end of the week.
Early 20th Century American art plays a big part in inspiring Jonas Wood’s work along with cubism and pop art. Unusually he combines oil and acrylic in his work to produce an overall flatness. Wood’s painting content is mainly home interiors and familiar landscapes. His humble aesthetic approach towards his subjects produces a disorientating sense of space within his paintings. Within the spaces, furnishings, plant life and memorabilia seem cluttered and squashed together, ‘using the domestic as a departure point for escapism, the claustrophobic compositions expand into an internal dream like space’. Wood’s interpretation of colour transforms into mock up collage paintings that echo his predecessors work. Jonas Wood is an L.A artist and is still relatively new. Take a look at his work below (it was hard to choose what to display here as all his work is fun to look at!)
Snippets of Inspiration
Fables/Fairy Tales/ Enchanting Stories
These playful yet serious and meaningful tales have been regurgitated into many forms, a lot of which people fail to recognize where they come from. Like with everything, often only the more well known stories stay with us yet there are so many that have been forgotten or missed. From a visual perspective what attracts me to fables are the illustrations, traditional and modern. How these narratives are pictured in a few images and the style of the illustrations themselves is what captures my interest.
My designs are based on various fables that I feel I can recreate and simplify to relate to current society – as don’t forget when a lot of these stories were first published a very different audience was being read to. So far I have been focusing on the Brothers Grimm fables just because there is such a huge array tales by them, some very famous one’s and some very unknown.
When I initially start thinking about design ideas I usually do an inspiration board or mood board to help focus my ideas and really get something on paper as I am the type who gets distracted easily. I particularly find my love for other people’s work gets in the way of me starting my own sketches! Mood boards are super fun and easy way to start the foundation of a design, they project where your coming from at the beginning of a concept, and they help support you at the final stages, I often come back to them when I need to refocus. I like looking at other people’s mood boards as well, they make interesting wall art.
I usually do mood boards on a pin board, finding images and collating them until I have enough. This time I used photoshop, I’m a newbie with it for sure and I want to be able to use it more skillfully, this took a lot longer than usual to do, but was worth it!
Sources
I used a couple of images from some artists and crafts people, the toad watercolour is by an artist called Daniel Mackie, you can find his blog here: http://danielmackie.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/the-frog/. I often look at his use of colour to help me think about how I want to do colour splashes in my designs and he also gets me thinking about perspective. Very fond of the Girl with the Frog umbrella print http://www.thedmcollection.com/product/girl-with-the-frog-umbrella-card
I used the Letter E from this talented artisan who posts her work at http://thesumofallcrafts.blogspot.co.uk/.
In the bottom left corner, the black cat illustration is by Rudyard Kipling for his Just so Stories – one of the many books I grew up with and still treasure.
The central image with the glowing house is by Kay Nielsen – his interpretation of the Brothers Grimm fable Hansel and Gretel. I adore Nielsen’s illustrations! I will definitely do posts that primarily focus on his works as they are so enchanting.
