Happy Sunday! It’s the 10th today… and that can only mean one thing: it’s time for Inspired by!

Inspired by is a blog series by my friend Riikka and I. We decide on a theme (and that theme can be anything from a film, a book, a painting, to an item, colour scheme or material) and then we create something with that theme or thing in mind.

We keep what we’re making a secret until reveal day on the 10th, when we show you and each other our creations.

This month’s theme

Once again we’ve managed to find a theme that is nothing like we’ve ever done before. Or rather: the theme found its way to us through the media! It’s the discovery of Huis te Warmelo, the 18th century Dutch warship that was found in the Gulf of Finland.

It was all over the news here and there was a big article about it in the paper you see in the photo above. It wasn’t enough to get my imagination going though. I felt I needed to know and see more and I wished I could have gone to a maritime museum or something, to see if I could find something there that would have sparked my interest.

I was unclear about the exact place where the ship sunk. From a sneaky photo I saw on Riikka’s Instagram feed, I think she has a much clearer idea of its whereabouts. Apparently it’s near a lighthouse. I’ve been to the Finnish coast, but there wasn’t a clear view to the Gulf of Finland there. It was beautiful nonetheless!

I tried to focus on the Dutch origin of the ship instead. I’ve never been to Medemblik, the ships home town. And I don’t remember ever seeing Huis te Warmelo, the manor the ship was named after, although I think I’ve visited Diepenheim once, because it’s not that far from the city I grew up in.

The project

This all made me think of the people that stayed behind and that lost family members when the ship sunk. I was thinking of people looking at the ship from the shore, maybe waving the ship good bye or maybe even waiting for the ship to return.

I wanted to put that into an art journal spread.

The inspiration for the night-time scene came from Regina Lords wonderful LoveArtHappyLife Art Lesson about Chagall. She’s such great teacher and her art work is so, so beautiful!

The heart isn’t there on purpose. It was already on the page when I started painting and it kept coming back up through the paint. Ah well…

Conclusion

It’s funny how sometimes you only need a hunch for inspiration to strike and how at other times all the words in the media and images on the internet aren’t enough. I’m looking forward to the next Inspired by theme :-).

And I miss doing stuff like this so much. I miss art journaling. I know I’ve said before that I’m not a real art journaler. But I really, really long to draw and paint more. It’s about time!

Now… head over to Riikka’s blog to see what she has created… I know she’s been to the Gulf of Finland and I’m curious to see why!