GIRASOL named after the sunflower fields that fill the Andalucían countryside in July. CANDELA Spanish for flame or firelight, capturing the heat and energy of the month. HIGUERA the fig tree, in fruit right now, with flesh this exact deep dusty rose. PISCINA simply “swimming pool,” that bright artificial turquoise so appealing in the summer months.
Use them however you like. A wash of background colour, a single brushstroke, a filter, a frame. The prompts this month and every month can be found here.
Two of this month’s daily prompts: 17, MATERIAL WORLD (as a pattern), and 20, LINE, found their way into the same artwork this last week.
The image of the sea was taken here at the coast, then combined with a pattern from the interior of our car. Layered together, the crinkled, patterned surface of the plastic became the texture of the water. Both beautiful and toxic at the same time.
The resulting image I have named: The standard (automotive-grade) plastic sea.
This work is a demonstration of how you never quite know where creativity will appear. Work through the prompts and inspiration finds you.
Join in at #COLCP26 and check out the prompts here.
At a recent Create & Connect art session, we completed the Wartegg Drawing Completion Test, devised by psychologist Ehrig Wartegg in 1934. The idea is simple. A series of lines and shapes. You complete them. You reveal yourself. You can read more about it here.
What emerged from it, after sitting with the drawings for a while afterwards, was a need to write it all down, what were the drawings telling me about myself. The result is this poem. It is called The Aesthete (due to a different personality test) and explores my needs and identity.
Needs Analysis of The Aesthete
I need space, to process internally. I need emotional space: emotionally rich, but not emotionally loud. I need to express my emotional movement. I seek beauty. I seek new and different. I seek the wonders of the world around me.
I need clear and defined. I need reliability, clarity and low drama. I need emotional distance. I seek positivity.
I need focus, discipline, and a sense of forward movement. I need a system of structured freedom. I need fairness, rules, or strategy. I need a few rules I can break. Are you bored reading this yet? I seek art forms that reinforce my optimistic outlook.
I need well-matched. I need grounded expression and balance. I seek sound. I need to be quietly fulfilled. I seek colour.
I need peace, perspective and possibility. I need quiet happiness, nature and imperfection. I seek to wash away the dust of every day life.
I need real and alive. I seek real and alive. I feel real and alive.
The image attached to this post came later: a wall by the bus stop, a face emerging from the cracks, and written in someone else’s hand: En esta esquina, grita conmigo, que haya paz en el mundo. On this corner, shout with me, let there be peace in the world.
It felt like The Aesthete had found a wall to live on.
Words By Clarence Greenway for Heronbam Books. Image created by Coast of Light.
JASMINE WHITE: the background, the space between things. COASTAL STRAW: dry grass in the heat, the colour of July arriving early. MAR ESMERALDA: the sea on a clear morning, deep and still. ALMADRABA, warm terracotta skin, the ancient tuna fishing grounds of the coast.
Use them however you like. A wash of background colour, a single brushstroke, a filter, a frame. The prompts this month and every month can be found here.
This week, inspired by maps as works of art, particularly those by Grayson Perry, I set out to create some of my own.
This first piece incorporates all of my daily prompts (see previous blog post), woven into a minimal map of where I live. I wanted the work to feel part mind map, part emotional landscape.
The piece is an attempt to geographically map my creative inspiration and surroundings, serving as a visual reminder of where, and from what, my creativity emerges around where I live.
