Week 1 - Jackie Gonzalez - There's Color & Inspiration All Around You

For the past couple of months, I have been challenging myself every day to take pictures of things that catch my eye to teach myself that inspiration and beauty can be found all around me and wherever I go. Color is one of the elements of design that can catch your attention right away and as a designer, color palettes are one of the things I stress about a lot to the point where I get a horrible headache because I am very on myself about it. Color has a good amount of impact when it comes to inspiration and creation; each one of these images I took has its own emotional and or visual impact depending on the colors presented within the photo. Personally, I am a colorful creative and the world around me is becoming a source of inspiration in my work or what I do. In this first picture, spotting an overgrowing gorgeous magenta bougainvillea bush on a spotty brick post on my morning walk filled me joy, energized me, and inspired me to get out more to find interesting plant life in my neighborhood. 

As cheesy as this sounds, even the items we bring back after grocery shopping can hold inspiration. The limes just happen to be assembled in a way that looks like there is a strong source of a yellow light coming from the left-hand side, emphasizing them more than say the dark green poblano peppers but still not demanding as much attention as the red apples do. There is a potential light study painting in here that I am very much inspired to paint. 

Lastly, I took this image one evening after a run to the store with my Mom. The sun sets behind my house which makes for a nice photo-op. There is a really nice contrast happening with the soft pink wisps of clouds along against the calming blue gradient happening in the sky. My front porch light gives off a strong amount of yellow-orange light which reminds me of a guiding light and is a visualization of the words "Welcome home, we are happy to see you!" or the sound of comforting guitar strumming that happens when the main character in a show or movie gets their happy ending. All in all, this image inspires warm and safe feelings.  

Although I am just a beginning designer, I try my best to implement exercises like the one I mentioned in this blog post to keep me trying to find inspiration around me as much as I possibly can. I have discovered that [vibrant] color is a major factor in the images that I look at for inspiration.