This painting was for a course assignment with a given theme. Inspiration (kimmoke), or stimulant, incentive; what inspires me to make art.

After my initial and quite quick and high-level pondering on some relevant keywords to me (light, nature and colors), I let this topic brew in my head for a week. Then I had a rough idea what to make and I made a trial on separate papers with the forms, composition and colors I had thought of.

I played with the colors some more and then started off with the final piece.

As you’ve probably noticed in most of my works, nature is one major inspiration and green is currently one, or the favorite color of mine. I did not want to make the background too bright, so I ditched the orange I was thinking of and opted also for a partly grey and cooler purple background areas. The green and yellow circle would be the brightest focal area hinting of a bright light and foliage.

In the background I use negative painting to bring out some foliage shapes and blended the colors to background. I also love animals, not that I’ve painted any recently, but I wanted to add bird silhouettes also to the piece. I am feeding little birds in the backyard and it is nice seeing them flutter around, so currently they also inspire me to paint, and to practice painting birds (in more detail than the silhouette in this picture).

Before long the dark grey nights, and days, will be over and Spring light awakens the plants dozing away in the melting ground. Soon green and light takes over the land.

I could have left a bit more of the white of the paper visible within the green area, as I originally practiced, but I got carried away with water and colors 😀

I will be revisiting this topic at some point for new pieces. I will use slightly larger canvas and also split the topic into multiple paintings.