Spring Inspiration

The first day of spring is just around the corner and I my head is buzzing with inspiration. I have been planning and applying for a bunch of spring events and I am so excited for the season to begin.

One of the events I am looking forward to most this year is the Elora Plein Air competition. Last year, I had wanted to return to the competition, but I was disappointed to find out that the competition had filled up quickly and I ended up missing the enrolment. I was determined not to have that happen this year and fortunately found myself on the waitlist for registration and was able to secure one of the coveted 70 spots.

Part of the plein air competition that I enjoy is the planning and preparation for the event. The first time I participated in it, I kind of winged it in terms of places to go and paint, but this year would like to have some locations in mind before I head over there. For this I have been going to Pinterest searching up Elora and Fergus tourist spots and things to do and I have started building a board to collect all the interesting places to paint. Some of them a pretty urban scenes and shops that I might like to try and paint and others are beautiful natural landscapes. If you have an interest in either of these towns yourself, you can view my Pinterest board here.

The other thing I like to do in lead up to the outdoor painting season is to watch Landscape Artist of the Year and fortunately, Amazon Prime has just released multiple seasons on their platform to watch. I had seen all of these episodes in their original airing, but I enjoy watching them again and again and it often inspires me to want to get out and paint. There is also something very wonderful about listening to the judges talk about the art as it is being created and taking part as they interview the painters about their process. I am always fascinated with the variety of paintings that come out of the particular landscape that they set before the artists and it is what motivates me to want to get out and get painting.

One observation I have made during this rewatch has been how open the painters are to painting landscapes that are unfamiliar. Urban artists are painting classical natural landscapes and naturalists are painting skyscrapers, cranes and industrial landscapes. It has inspired me to try and push farther in my plein air journey and I have been considering doing some practice paintings in my neighbour once the weather warms up. If nothing else comes of it, it will just be a fun experience.

Another event that is inspiring me for Spring, is the Alice in Bloomland exhibit at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton. As a kid I was fascinated by the world of Wonderland and it’s cakes that made Alice grow and shrink, the magical landscapes and imagery of the story and the unique characters that she met throughout the story. I think this theme lends itself well to a botanical garden and I am very much looking forward to seeing the exhibit this month. The exhibit closes at the end of this month, so if you are in the GTA and would like to visit, please make sure to do so soon.

I have also been happily painting along in my 100 Day Project which has been very inspired by spring motifs and colours so far. My second pattern for this project was inspired by Peach Blossom tulips. I chose these tulips because of their unusual petal shape (they are not as curved and closed and typical tulips) and because I enjoyed their bright pink and light green variegated blooms. I had purchased a tube of bright pink gouache a few months ago and did not have a good occasion to really use this colour until this pattern. Below is the process video for the painting if you would like to see how it started.

I have been really inspired by these flowers and created three beautiful patterns in procreate with the elements from my painting. I wanted to keep the flowers in a colour scheme that is most common for tulips so I kept the flowers in shades of pink, yellow and red. For the background colours I wanted to keep a monochromatic feel and chose a colour to match the colour of the tulips.

In addition to creating a pattern with the tulips from the second painting, I thought it would be fun to mix and match some of the flowers from the first pattern with some of the flowers from the second pattern. This was even more interesting to play with as I tried to decide if all of the flowers should be in similar colours or unique to how I had painted them individually.

What I have come to realize during this process so far is that I am very much enjoying the ability to edit and play with different combinations of the elements I have painted and to test out new things. I am finding that I can get lost in the editing process for a while as I rotate, change size and flip the elements to make them fit into the pattern. I find this process to be very stimulating and relaxing at the same time and it is making me want to do more of it, which is good as I am so early into this project.

I have started a new painting this week, this time the inspiration is Pooh Dahlias in Winnie the Pooh’s signature colours of yellow and red. These flowers are high contrast and have an interesting combination of larger and smaller petals in different colours that are what I think makes them so interesting to look at. I decided to paint these flowers slightly differently from the tulip flowers in that I painted multiple flowers at once, painting one part of the flower at a time. This required me to think about how big the flowers would be and how they would interact with each other on the page without sketching them in ahead of time. If you would like to see how this turned out, you can watch it on the video below.

What I found after the painting was complete, that I wasn’t very sure how I wanted to put the pieces together into a pattern. I didn’t end up liking my first attempt at the pattern and felt like it was too busy.

For my second attempt I further edited what was included in the pattern and I feel like it looks much better, but I am still unsure about whether or not I like this pattern. I am not discouraged though because I know that this is part of the process and I am not going to enjoy every pattern I create. The beauty of this is that I can go back later and try again or similarly to what I did with the tulips, mix and match pieces from different patterns and see if I like anything better.

I am now finished 3 of the 20 patterns I expect to finish over this project. I am really enjoying this entire process and I like the aspect that I am creating every day, but I don’t have the pressure of producing 100 paintings by the end of the series. I’m not sure what I will do with these patterns at the end, but I am not worried about that at this time and I am firmly focused on enjoying the journey and discovery of the process.

Until next time, I hope you have a lovely spring-inspired week.

Laura