Colour Collecting and Inspiration

Dear friends and fellow colour enthusiasts!

I’ve just returned from 2 months away in Australia/New Zealand to visit with friends and family. Of course there is also the added bonus of escaping the cold and grey Canadian winter!!

“Everything is so green!” is what I kept saying when first arriving in New Zealand in December. There was so much in bloom and my inspiration cup quickly began to fill.

I get almost all my colour inspiration directly from nature, so I thought I’d show you some of the colours I “collected” in my time away as well as pieces of art my surroundings directly inspired.

Flowers!

In the top two images above you can see how the colour combinatinos in both these gardens influenced these stones. Flower gardens are a wonderful place to find different and fun colours combined.

In the bottom two images you can see how these flowers inspired the colours in these stones. I was lucky to be able to photograph the finished piece with the flower of inspiration in the same fashion as I created my book “Jewels of Nature”. While the book may be finished I am still constantly finding new and wonderful things in nature that beg to be a muse.

Here are some more colour inspirations from flower… starting with hydrangeas!

Sometimes I like to collect flowers from the garden to make my own colour combinations…

The Ocean

It’s amazing how different the ocean looks in different parts of the world. Here in Canada the ocean is quite dark blue and inky. In New Zealand I marvelled at how light and “pastely” the ocean looked. It’s fair to say that I painted quite a few stones inspired by these colours!

I got to see some pretty amazing sunsets over the ocean. I was inspired to record these moments in my little travel journal (shown above). It is a great way to collect colours and create a visual memory of a wonderful time.

Collected for the future…

I was SO inspired that there simply wasn’t enough time to create from all the colours I collected, so here is a photo album full of the photos I have “saved for later”