Any artist can't help but reflect on the strange phenomenon of inspiration from time to time. I read long ago that one universal characteristic of creative people that they are interested in a wide, wide variety of things and are always reading, looking at magazines, looking at the world, anything that adds images and ideas to the mind. I've seen other artist's studios and bookshelves and they usually are covered in the same kind of books I have. Egyptian hieroglyphic books, heraldry tomes, old calendars, painting books, artists biographies, travel photo books and on and on. Currently the paintings I'm doing have 2 sources of inspiration. One is the awesome pictures of other galaxies taken by the Hubble satellite that are on the web and a chance statement by my daughter while looking at one of my paintings. She said it looked like her Lava Light, and the proverbial bulb went on in my head! It was great and I'm still painting with that in mind.
Here's the painting I was working on at the time, you can see the galaxy and lava light influence immediately.
It's 12" x 18" and painted on a panel with acrylic paints and several techniques. The background is done with water down paint, painted on then dropping 91% alcohol into it to create the patterns (the 91% part is important) Most of the glow at the bottom is glazing medium with yellow in it.
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