Inspiration from Israel

I have just returned from a trip to Israel. It was wonderful to be back in the Middle East again. And, as always, I got totally trigger happy with my camera! There is little else that energizes me as much as exploring new spots on the planet – the faces, the sounds, the tastes, the smells, the music.  My travel pics are a constant source of inspiration – for sketching, painting, writing music and prose.  

I have discovered that my memories of a particular trip are always tied to a specific colour palette, and these tend to come out unintentionally when I do collages involving found objects from the trip. For example my Prague collage turned out to be a deep cerise pink, Taiwan came out jade green, Amsterdam turned out a bright orange – and it wasn’t planned!  It was quite a surprise to me. More about these collages in my next blog…

To get back to the topic – I have decided to do the exercise consciously this time, and create a colour palette of the Israel trip by using some of my pics as colour swatches.  I am quite happy with the result, so I will be doing this after every trip from now on.

Colours of Israel - Cool

Colours of Israel - Warm

While I was collaging the colour palette, the muse arrived, so I ended up grouping some of my other pictures from the trip as well – one is a collage of people on the street in Israel, and the other is a collection of graffiti that I saw on the inside of the Berlin-esque concrete wall that divides the Palestinian area of Beth Lehem from Israeli territory.  Enjoy!

Israeli Street Life

The Wall around Palestine