It's that old stone wall you saw on your day trip to wine country, that metal table rusting in your neighbor’s backyard, that marble countertop you sat at during lunch. Even that telephone pole you passed on your evening walk to the library... Take a look at it again.
Inspiration truly is everywhere, but just in case you need help finding it, here are some of our favorite places to look:
Travels
Every few posts on our @photosurfaces feed, you'll see a place we've had the pleasure of gathering inspiration - usually somewhere ancient or ruined, a fair share of natural landscapes too. Definitely textured, naturally worn and faded, maybe brilliantly colored. It's one of the things we love about being on the road: opening our (minds and) eyes and soaking up everything around us... Then documenting and translating that into something beautifully abstract.
There is no shortage of inspiration available on this little app, and with an inordinate number of gorgeous accounts filled with food, travel, design galore, it's easy to get overwhelmed. So we simplify a bit; We pay attention to color. In our last batch of surfaces, we took color cues from everywhere, including portraits, landscapes, and interiors (usually just screenshotting and dumping into an inspiration folder). The result from this latest pull led to some super fun backgrounds we're in love with.
We started getting back into Pinterest earlier this year. Once you filter through the heaps of (dare we say?) junk (or just get better at keywords / searching), and you find that one amazing photo, it will in fact lead to an endless stream of better imagery. We hit gold when we searched for "natural textures" and found really stunning macro shots of plant and animal textures full of color combinations we couldn't dream up on our own. Painting these is definitely high on our to-do list.
What influences you?
We're always curious how other creatives find their spark. Send us an email or DM on Instagram about where you find inspiration. We'd love to hear about it!