All the colours of the Mediterranean

Colour is the best antidote to artist's block. Anyone engaged in the creative arts has experienced this. In reality, anyone, creative or not experiences this. That feeling that nothing you do can come right. That things are in your head but somehow they cannot find a way out. Or, perhaps you are feeling too blasé to exercise yourself. The summer heat does that to me.

When I worked on Mediterranea, this was the mood I was in. Nothing was coming out right and I was getting increasingly tense. I had started some four projects simultaneously in the hope that one of them would get my juices going. Nothing. Dry as a bone. Then I was looking at some Arabian scimitars. Lovely, curved, shiny and deadly. The images were very good and the colours of the steel were captured. Exceptional photography.

And I started doodling. Sketching the doodles. Then giving them the added zing of different framing. And the colours started flowing. Daniel Smiths are so wonderfully grainy and textured as colours that they give that added dimension to the painting.

Et voilá! Mediterranea on A3 300gsm cold-pressed NOT Arches paper.