The iPhone has a really good camera, and I always have my iPhone with me. So I use it freely whenever I see anything that might make a good subject for a painting, an unusual texture or pattern, or anything else I might be able to use in a painting.
During a walk in my neighborhood last year, I spotted these large, colorful palm leaves. I loved the colors, the textures and the position of the leaves, and I was able to get in close and compose the photo the way I wanted it:
It turned into two paintings, one emphasizing the bolder colors and with a dark background, the other with more pastel colors:
This has turned into a wonderful tool for capturing fleeting moments, even scenes out of my car (when the car is stopped, of course)! I have quite a few of these photos that will eventually make their way into my painting.
Two of my recent textured cityscape paintings.
I seem to have two creative states. The first is the wonderful one where the ideas are coming to me so fast and from so many different directions that I can hardly write them down fast enough. The second is when I think I will never have another creative idea in my life.
When the second state hits, as it does to all of us from time to time, I’ve found that the best thing to do is to go look at art. I go to a gallery or a museum. Or I just look online. There are plenty of great sites like Art Knowledge News (www.artknowledgenews.com) that bring you great art every day.
Great art will inspire me. Not to copy it, because that’s unethical and not creative at all. But maybe it will remind me of a medium or a technique or a color palette I’ve liked in the past, or wanted to try. This Paul Klee painting, for example, reminds me how much I like abstracted urban scenes, line and inventive color.
