Paint Chip Inspiration

If you ever need a quick muse, go straight to your nearest paint or home improvement store and peruse the paint chips. With endless hues offering such descriptive names like Rocky Slope, Deep Cavern, Lightening, Painted Desert, and Monarch Wing, you can find yourself inspired by nature while standing in the middle of the paint aisle.



A random handful of paint chips can

get the imagination flowing. Try con-

necting a bunch of paint color names

in stream-of-thought story or poem:

I was beachcombing upon our Mother

Earth during the solstice. I noticed a

shimmering seashell and at the same

moment I saw lightening out across

the ocean deep. I ran toward the

seashell just inside the mouth of a

deep cavern, protected now from a

thunderous downpour. I watched my

seashell, as it lay on the sand, alight

into a calcite butterfly with each

pulse of lightening.

Pick a few paint chips that grab you and use those to write a few lines of poetry, or a detailed setting for a fictional piece, write a song, or use them to inspire your next painting or altered art piece. Recently we used paint chips during our Photo Safari creativity workshop by randomly chosing a paint chip color and then matching that color to something found in nature.

You can reverse these prompts by blending your own colors, creating a nice palette on your paper then coming up with descriptive “paint chip” names of your own.

Nature and inspiration are all around you!

See how we used paint chips to inspire creative play with your family.

 

 

The paint chip color "Cottontail" was the muse for this

little acrylic/pen & ink ATC.

Native Palettes

I recently led a “native palette” wildlfower walk where we created natural palettes from native plants along the trail by smearing and rubbing petals, leaves, and stems on paper.

It was a relaxing gathering of creatives on a wildflower wander, learning a little about some favorite desert flowers while exploring the Santa Rosa San Jacinto Mountains National Monument visitor center trails for a variety of shapes, colors, and fragrances to help our creativity blossom. We had a great time with the exercise, each making our own native palette and revealing some unexpected and surprising colors!

An example palette made

from plants & other natur-

al substances in my yard.



This is a great exercise to try, easy too. Grab some paper (water color, card stock, printer paper, pretty much anything goes), I recommend cutting an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet in half for easier handling. Press and smear or rub a variety of plant materials onto your paper. Experiment with different parts of the plant, try to keep pollen separate from petals, try fruits. Go beyond plants by smearing moist soil or mud, charcoal, minerals and other natural sources you find.

Want to take part in future outings that fuel your creativity? Check out Let Nature Be Your Muse meetups!


The group's collection of palettes (the first round)!



Creativity Break: Crayon Naming

“An enterprising child set up a table at the park, selling crayons for a nickel. I gave her a dollar for Tickle Me Pink.” @WordWhispers

Let your creative nature come out and play, assign a new name for at least 8 of the color crayons you see in the image below. What story, memory or "fantastical" world will your crayon names leap from within your imagination? Alternative: pick 2-3 colors and create a name for each shade of purple or green, or blue, etc. Please feel free to share your names :)

Image: dreamstime.com

Nature's Palette: Clinging Feather

Photo (feather) by Dries Knapen

Color is a powerful visual. A specific color or color combination in nature may be used as a warning, as camouflage, in mating, to attract pollinators, and more. Either way, it's purpose is to evoke a response. What colors do you respond to in the things you collect or the art you create?

The nature's palette series is a color prompt from nature itself, how will nature inspire you today?

Nature's Palette: Lavender Fields

In a previous post, I talked about the inspiration that could be found at your local harvest festivals, like lavender festivals, cherry festivals, etc. My family and I just spent the weekend at a nearby lavender festival and had a great time! These are fun for the whole family and events like these are a fanstastic source of inspiration for all the senses! While there, all I wanted to do was sketch or try my hand at a little painting or pastels like these artists...

I kept thinking of how fun it would be to set up a mini-easel for my son and let him go with finger paints and brushes and just see what we might create--perhaps something lavender-y, perhaps he would paint his famous monkeys :) We did manage to collect some flowers and make our own "magic petal potions!"

How will this nature palette inspire you today?

For ocean-inspired nature palettes, click the links below:

Ocean <--click

Seashells <--click