The 100 day project days 21-30 plus how artists find {or reverse-engineer} inspiration

As I look over the monthly spread on my March planner, I see an unbroken streak of art sessions. This is the first time that I have ever had an unbroken streak spanning a month, and I am positively delighted!

Another little metric? In these 30 days of art journaling, I have 20 finished art journal pages! As a reminder, my aim with this 100 day project was to show up and work in my art journals for 100 days, not to complete a spread a day, though there have been multiple days when I have finished a page a day.

Observations of note: Where and how artists find inspiration

During this 10-day period, I painted 3 abstract landscapes. I call these imagined landscapes, because unlike other abstract landscape painters, I’m not actively trying to abstractify any particular landscape.

But these landscapes, imagined and abstracted, must come from somewhere. I’ve noticed that many of them have similarities in the line quality and style. For a long time, I thought that was simply my style, or a movement of my hand that felt familiar and comfortable.

But last week, as I watched the squirrels scamper across the tree outside my house while sipping my morning coffee, I realized that the line quality and style in many of my imagined landscapes is an abstraction of this daily morning view of the tree!

I didn’t set out to abstractify this view. In fact, I didn’t even realize that I had paid such close attention to the way the branches grow and overlap and loop back on the themselves. But my deep love for and connection with this tree found an expression in my paintings, and it got me to wondering: how often do artists reverse-engineer their source of inspiration when they talk about their art?

There are times, of course, when the source of inspiration is more liner — the artist sees something, is inspired, paints.

But I’m willing to bet my bottom dollar that there are many, many times when the source of inspiration is not so clear. When it takes time for an artist to figure out what sparked their inspiration in the first place. Why they return to a particular subject multiple times, and why a particular element on their paintings repeats in a similar manner across pieces. And once they do pin-point the original source of inspiration, they can then spin that out into words that make it seem like they knew what the inspiration was all along, when in actuality, they didn’t.

And that makes many non-artists and beginner artists look at paintings and wonder how in the name of all that is holy did an artist look at a landscape and know how to abstractify it; what elements to incorporate and what to ignore; and how to incorporate them.

Well, what if I told you that they didn’t know? Not all of the time?

What if what actually happened was this: They put in the hours in the studio; painted and perfected their technique and style; played and experimented with their materials; with colors and lines and shapes; created compositions that were pleasing to their eye; repeated lines and shapes and themes that excited them; and one day, while doing something completely mundane, they realized that this, this was their inspiration all along.

And what if, upon realizing that, they wove a story that made it seem like they knew, all along, what they were trying to express with their work?

Art journal spreads

Here are my completed art journal spreads from the last 10 days of the 100 day project. Click on the images to enlarge.

Which one of these is your favorite?