Every now and then, I like to zoom out. What are the things I’ve been noticing around me? What have I been taking pictures of? A quick scroll through my camera roll or my bookmarked Instagram posts helps me see the big picture. Often, there’s a color or color palette that emerges from these saved images. The colors, textures, and themes that I glean from this collection of photos helps me think about which direction I might want to go next in my studio.

In this group of photos, I’m noticing interesting ranges of greens, from bright chartreuse, to a soft teal, to a neutral hunter green. Theres’s some pink because, well, when is there never not pink. What I’m also seeing is very flat areas of color. A solid teal wall in the bottom left vignette, a solid printed dress next to that, just two colors in that scrumptious-looking pavlova in the top left corner, and a few touches of soft blue.

Zooming out on what exactly it is that I’m looking at helps jolt my creativity, and I highly recommend it as an activity to get those creative juices flowing. I don’t exactly have a direction that I’m wanting to go with my next paintings, so activities like this help me take the first step in figuring out what is coming next.