What spark of art yonder lies?
It's when I'm among the hills, valleys, cliffs, meadows, and moorland that ideas for landscape art come, often unbidden.
“Direct observation” means you've witnessed something yourself, in person, as it happened, in the place it happened. It's also a kind of art.
So all my ideas come from detecting something while I'm out and about.
It's why the landscapes in my paintings and prints are places I've actually been to, spent time in – I've experienced them directly.
Inspiration isn't fussy about its origins
All landscapes (and some cityscapes) inspire me. Including the mundane, odd, and not obviously attractive scenes.
The exact 'where' does not matter; the type of landscape does not matter; the time of day and season does not matter. There's no recipe which reliably conjures up ideas for prints or paintings.
This is okay, because as I've hinted above, anything at any time can spark an idea.
I find I don't need a magic recipe. It would actually be nice if I could stop the ideas coming sometimes. I have far too many to ever work‑up, and it's frustrating.
The weather is about the only thing that does affect whether ideas flow: I get too cold to function in rain and high winds, so I tend to retreat to the studio.
A landscape whispers shouts 'paint me!'
The flicker that catches my eye, can be a number of qualities in my surroundings: a composition (the shapes in the scene), the atmospherics (light and dark), and colours and textures.
Sometimes it's a particular thing, such as a tree that's intriguing, spectacular, or unique.
Saying all that, I'm not always sure what's triggered me to sense an artwork lies before me.
Often, something just says 'paint me' and then I have to figure out what that something is.