This week I'm traveling again. When I travel, I like to pull inspiration from what I see. Light & dark contrast, color proportions, texture, and my favorite-- the challenge of mixing paint to match colors I capture in the pictures. It may just look like a bunch of pictures of junk, but here are the creative challenges I see lying within each image:
I walked outside after a long day, looked up, and stopped short when I saw this sunset after a stormy summer's day. I need to recreate this color scheme and with the challenge of creating a soft, warm lighted contrast that seems to glow in comparison to the rest of the miniature.
I've started traveling with a small collection of mobile paint supplies. One thing I miss, my paint water cup I use each time I paint. Sometimes it shows me a nice pattern for a future freehand motif. Surprise!
1. Clouds: I love the rich blue transition paired with the soft texture of the clouds. Maybe inspiration for a fur-lined cloak!
2 & 3. Drinks: Studies of glass jars with liquid in them. One day I want to be paint the way different light shows through glass jars.
4. Coffee: I love the rich browns in my delicious, half-full Cappuccino. I mix brown colors so often for leathers, it gets monotonous so this would be a fun color-matching challenge.
5. Apples: A challenge to blend equally vibrant red, yellow, and green transitions between themselves.
6. Twitter Image: An inspiration for an overall color proportion scheme for a mini someday. I was surfing Twitter while waiting for my flight to arrive and I just love that bright blue-- reminds me of Reaper's "Surf Aqua" paint color I used on the Maralise mini.
7. Magnolia Tree: I love the waxy leaves and about-to-bloom flower bud. I like the white contrast and bits of brown yellow from the older leaves. A great challenge in color proportion and choosing where to include a pop of clean, stark white somewhere on a mini to create visual interest.
8. School Building: I love this older Catholic girls' school building. Despite the sea foam green and aqua, its overall look is quite haunting. It would be a great challenge for painting faded, textured surfaces weathered by years of rain and hot Louisiana summers.