Inspiration in everything!

I'm often asked what inspires my work.  Well, how long have you got?

There really isn't an easy answer to this as I'm inspired by so many things.  Sometimes I get so much inspiration from one thing that it leads to a series of work.  This was so when I began to see rusty objects over and over again and the more I saw, the more I noticed rust in many other places.   This overload of inspiration lead to two series - Corrosion, which was inspired by the rust itself, and Oxidisation, which used fabric and threads dyed with the rusty items.

       

      

I have always had a great fancy for maps which lead to my series Seen From Above.   The inspiration came from contour lines and map symbols as well as the layout of settlements.  In several of the pieces maps were used as part of the design.

        

 

I haven't worked on a series for a few years now although certain images keep coming back into my work.  Beach Huts make an appearance now and then, together with anything connected to the sea.  This has been since we moved closer to the sea which we visit to walk several days each week.

When I look back in my sketchbook to see where the inspirations for each piece of work have come from, I find that most of all it can be just one image seen on that day that has immediately caught my eye and I see how I can interpret it on the page.  Sometimes literally, other times it just sparks something else.

In the last week my sketchbook has continued, although with only a few pages left, it has become increasingly difficult to take photos each day.  The first couple of days used prints from my stash as I wanted some quick days because I was starting a quilt this week so my time was precious.

My stash included several painted papers that I completed during a C&G Creative Sketchbook course I did in 2009.  Inspiration for part of my work on this course was torn and painted layers so the first page was a piece of one of the papers which started as a print of an image which was rubbed with layers of markal wax crayons and then topped with a layer of painted bondaweb.

I find some of my Gelli Prints are inspiration in themselves.  This next page used a gelli

print which was made with stencil of squares in different sizes.  I felt the paper itself was enough on it's own so I just added four yellow squares.

On Instagram this week someone I follow shared a piece of work which included prairie points
 which reminded my just how much I love them and have often included them in my work.  I was therefore inspired to make paper prairie points from gelli printed paper which I placed onto a gelli printed background.  I added the cross stitches as  reminder that they can be stitched in cloth too.

Another page was a 'naked' gelli print made using feathers and lace which was enough not to add anything to it.

We managed a couple of beach walks this week and found thousands of shells had been washed up in great big clumps.  I took photos of the shells and then manipulated them in Photoshop.  I'm not good with Photoshop and tend to just fiddle with the different effects until I get something I like without remembering what I've actually done, so I find it difficult to repeat anything I like!

I found a little saying about shells that spoke to me so simply wrote it over the shell background.

Using another gelli print, I drew several mandalas which I just love whether I am stitching, crocheting or drawing.

I recently treated myself to some Gelli Minis so tried them out for one of my pages, just using the triangle shape and various stencils, stamps and bubble wrap to add some texture and the highlighted using a white Posca pen.

February is Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Month and because my grandson Samuel was born with CHD I always remember it in some way.  This year I made him star of a page with hearts  and background which were printed using my gelli plate and a foam heart  shape.

Back to using my gelli print stash, this time I turned to my wooden printing blocks for inspiration and printed a design using one which I feel is a peacock design.

And finally for this week, today's design came about while I was thinking about designs for some embroidery I am planning at the moment.   I want to use stylised flowers, leaves and trees so this was a way of having an initial play.   I printed the green for the leaves using skeleton leaves to add texture to the gelli plate and for the background I used a print block I made year ago with card and string to live the bark of a tree.