inspiration

Collaborative art journeys: tips for creative success, exploring valldemossa

Artist materials on location
| Sam Waters
Pages of bright colours and energetic marks from artists adventures
Pages of bright colours and energetic marks from artists adventures

First let me explain what an Artist Adventure is… It is a project that has grown into a creative journey. Rachael Johnson and I share this journey. We have been art accountability buddies for over two years.

We regularly meet to collaborate on projects and build our art businesses. During this time we’ve noticed how meeting up sparks new ideas, boosts our energy, and keeps our momentum going.

Now, we are taking things a step further. We are going to be documenting our adventures. We will be expanding to new locations. We are keeping things simple.

Our goal? To remain creatively curious and inspire others to give it a try. With no set agenda and only limited materials, we simply enjoy a day out. It includes at least one artistic activity. It will be just one of our Artists Adventures.

The images above show you a peak at the sketchbook pages we created on our Artists Adventures.

The Power of collaboration

Working with an accountability buddy has completely transformed my art journey. Rachael and I regularly meet up, and each time we do, it reignites my passion for creativity. We bounce ideas off each other. We also get honest feedback. Having someone alongside me who shares my love for art has been invaluable.

Our First Artists Adventure

Our first adventure together as “Artists Adventures” took us to the stunning town of Valldemossa. It is a hidden treasure in the Tramuntanta Mountains. The drive was breathtaking. It wound through ancient olive trees and stone buildings.

We dodged goats and cyclists on the narrow mountain road. The town itself felt like it had been pulled straight from a painting. Stone paths, terraced hills, and olive trees provided endless inspiration.

Bell Tower in Valldemossa with green ceramic tiles
Artists showing sketchbooks on location in Valldemossa Sam Waters

We settled in the square, set up our materials, and just let the creativity flow. I started with bright blue crayons and lime green paint. I made marks across multiple sketchbook pages. I was influenced by the turquoise tiles of the bell tower, pictured above. The beauty of working in a new place was how easily the ideas flowed. 

Do you ever get stuck with the blank page? I know that this can stop me creating. I highly recommend you try working outside to give you freedom and confidence.

Immersed in the moment

What I loved most was how engrossed we became in our art. Despite people passing by and even a group of teenagers sitting nearby, we were totally in the zone.

With no worries about what anyone thought—I was simply enjoying the process.

The images below offer a small taste of the colours, shapes and views that inspired me.

Purple plant in pot for artists adventures outdoor sketching
Purple and yellow flowers outside a house in Valldemossa
Old doorway in the pretty town of Valldemossa used for Artists Adventures outdoor sketching
Vivid red flowers against an old green shutter

Energy & Inspiration

By the end of the day, I felt energised and inspired. This was just the start, and I’m excited to continue exploring new places and seeing how they influence my art. If you’re feeling stuck creatively, I encourage you to grab a sketchbook and get outside. It’s amazing what a change of scenery can do!

Pack your pencil case with a couple of crayons. Add a pencil and a fine line pen. Just see what you can create.

how You Can get involved

To stay updated with all Artists Adventures, please sign up below. Additionally, you can get hints and tips to start your own adventure.

Have you ever embarked on your own artistic adventure? I’d love to hear about your favourite moments or the challenges you’ve faced along the way!

  • Do you find working outside fuels your creativity, or is your inspiration drawn from other places? Let’s share our stories!
  • What tools or supplies are always in your art kit? Anything unexpected you’ve discovered along the way?

Please share in the comments below.

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Travel Sketchbook Fun

Pages from travel sketchbook
| Sam Waters

Traveling is a remarkable adventure, filled with new experiences, sights, and stories. What if you could capture those moments not just in photographs but in a more personal, creative way? Enter the travel sketchbook, a compact and versatile companion for any journey.

Stack of sketchbooks
Pages from travel sketchbook

Embrace the Creative Process

The beauty of a travel sketchbook lies in its flexibility. It’s a personal canvas where you can sketch landscapes, flowers, animals, jot down thoughts, create collages, and even experiment with mixed media.

There’s no pressure to make it perfect—each page is a unique snapshot of your journey. As you create, you’ll find that the act of sketching helps you see the world in a different light, appreciating details and capturing memories in a way that photos alone can’t.

Create a Lasting Keepsake

By the end of your trip, your sketchbook becomes a cherished keepsake filled with personal stories, artistic experiments, and a tangible record of your travels.

Unlike a digital album, a travel sketchbook has a tactile quality that invites you to revisit and relive your journey with every turn of the page. As you are creating it sparks conversations with fellow travellers you meet along the way.

Take a look at some of the pages from my travel sketchbooks below.

Pages from travel sketchbook
Pages from travel sketchbook
Pages from travel sketchbook

So, on your next adventure, bring along a travel sketchbook. It doesn’t just capture where you’ve been—it captures how you felt, what you saw, and the unique moments that made your journey unforgettable. 

In my next blog I will be sharing my own travel sketchbook from a recent trip to Baja. I will be sharing my top tips for having just the right media in your pencil case to ensure you can capture your experiences, so why not sign up to my mailing list to ensure you don’t miss it.

If you have been keeping your own travel sketchbooks I’d love to hear of how this works for you, do you have any top tips to share? Do you prepare your books before you go? It would be great to hear your experience, please comment below.

If you would like to share pages from your own travel sketchbooks I would love to feature them in my next blog post and on my social media. Please email them to me – sam@samwatersartist.com

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a joyful Artist Collaboration

| Sam Waters

How it all Started

My sketchbook collaboration project started from an act of kindness really. I had seen on social media that artist Sue Bulmer was focussing for a whole year on creating concertina sketchbooks as a way to fuel her creative soul. Her plan was to create one sketchbook every month.

sketchbook page
blue abstract inky marks
sketchbook covers

how could i reach out

As an artist I seem to generate and collect lots of collage papers, too many to ever use myself. As I sat in my studio surrounded by mountains of collage paper, I was inspired by Sue’s project and thought I should send her some of my collage papers for her to use in her sketchbooks. I was thinking how much I would enjoy receiving a package of papers from another artist.

What marks, what colours, textures and types of papers would be different to those that I usually use.

So I selected a range of handmade and found papers, wrote a note, packaged it all up and sent it off in the post…I don’t think Sue will mind if I say that she was very surprised and overjoyed to receive such a surprise package in the post.

Package tie with string and collage papers
close up of string tying up a package

What happened next

We arranged to have a video call so we could chat, we immediately hit it off and soon decided that we should think of a combined project that we could work on together, our sketchbook collaboration project was born.

Mindful and very low pressure

We wanted it to be low key with no pressure as we both already had pretty full schedules, we made our own rules, or rather decided not to have any! The basis of the project was that we both made a concertina sketchbook, each of us would work on a few pages in any way we chose and then we would post the book to the other artist for them to carry on.

It was fun to receive the book in the post, to see what Sue had done and what goodies she had sent for me to work with. I found working in the book calming, it didn’t have any expected outcome, just a fun few hours. Once I started in the studio, the pages took on a life of their own.

A friendship has been formed

From that moment our friendship has grown, we now have regular video calls and even arranged an in person meet to exchange our sketchbooks, visit a gallery and have a lovely art chatty lunch.

Sam Waters and Sue Bulmer exchanging sketchbooks artists
two concertina sketchbooks with a hand pointing

A joyful resource

The books we have made are a joyful playful resource. Packed full of colour and marks, one very pink the other blues. Some pages shout that they need some calm, others need more to be added. Already we have been working for just over a year and there is more to come.

collage papers

I would highly recommend thinking about doing your own collaboration project as it is a great way to spark new ideas, make connections, push you to respond to marks and colours that you may never have chosen.

How to start you own creative collaboration

Find out how to start your own creative collaboration in my next blog post.

Want to know more about our collaboration project ? Then why not enter your email below to receive my newsletter where I share updates of our progress.

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Jumping into Spring

Pile of Line, tonal and colour floral drawings, floral paintings, floral studies, floral inspiration
| Sam Waters

The long dark days of winter offer a chance to hunker down in the studio, to re-build my creative energy, to read for inspiration and experiment in my sketchbook, but I long for the brighter warmer days when the studio door can be left open and I can hear the bird song floating on the air and everything just seems that little bit lighter. I am an abstract floral artist, so join me as I delve into how Spring is weaving its magic into my creative practise, bringing colour and joy.

Spring sparking action

When the days start to get longer in the UK, I know that Spring is finally here and my studio becomes bathed in this new light, I’ve no idea why but I find it so much easier to work, my energy levels rise and creativity starts to flow. 

The arrival of Spring has also meant a studio tidy, it is really important to set up my environment to allow my new work to have room to breathe. It is very frustrating constantly tripping over stuff and rooting through piles of papers to find the tool that I need buried beneath.

purple crocus
Yellow daffodils

colour inspiration and new shoots

Spring is a time for new shoots, and this is how I feel about starting my latest collection of paintings, at this point I’m not even sure where they are heading but having a clean clutter free space with all the tools, paints, mediums and surfaces ready to go will be more productive.

Out and about on my walks I am noticing more colour, the trees are bursting out in fantastic displays of frothy colour. The camellia have been spectacular and so many varieties just on my daily dog walk around the block. The flower is quite rose like in structure, but so hardy producing prolific flowers in every shade of pink, deep reds, and delicate whites at a time of year when most plants are still sleeping. 

how to maintain creative momentum

As there isn’t much colour about at the moment I have really been struck by these beautiful bushes. Where the blooms have been hanging over the pavement, I have picked a stem to take back to the studio for some blind drawing practise. I draw the same bloom multiple times, using different media, both wet and dry. This  practise really makes me see how the petals are structured, where the light and dark tones fall, the different shapes and how the waxy leaves are juxtapose to the soft satiny petals.

Gorgeous Pinks

The blind, tonal drawings and sketchbook play which capture the essence of Spring in these floral beauties have inspired new elements of shape, vivid colours and a softness for me to explore further in larger studies.

Whats on the Studio Wall

Pile of Line, tonal and colour floral drawings, floral paintings, floral studies, floral inspiration
Detail of black and white floral line drawing
Line, tonal and colour floral drawings pinned to the wall
detail of line drawing

Spring Summary

As I immerse myself in the vibrant hues of spring and let nature guide my creative practise, I’m reminded of the renewal of the season. With a clutter free studio and the palette Spring I am jumping in with both feet ready to explore fresh inspiration and experimental discoveries.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new season and if you are including it in your own creative practise, please let me know in the comments below, or send me an email.

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Three super simple top tips to help abstract painters generate new ideas

Collage picture of rusty farm roller, cropped to show composition, two images in black and white
| Sam Waters

In this Blog post I want to share how I use photos I took on a recent trip to Cornwall to help inspire my work and share some image manipulation tips to help spark inspiration for generating new ideas.

The trip was a flying work visit and there really was very little time to be creative in my sketchbook as by the end of the day I was totally exhausted and not feeling at all creative. Yet each day during my lunch break I always managed to get out for a walk, the weather was glorious with wall to wall sunshine and as I enjoyed the beautiful weather I spotted interesting things on my walk that captured my attention.

I always carry my phone so I took lots of pictures of an old rusty roller that I stumbled across on the side of the road.

This type of roller is used for rolling the fields. It improves seed to soil contact across the whole field by consolidating any loose soil left after drilling, this promotes successful and consistent germination which is the basis for a competitive crop.

The roller was pretty big, and very rusty with the ends displaying a vibrant shade of teal blue with deep scratch marks. The blue was in such contrast to the rusty shades so it really caught my eye.  Blue and orange are known as complimentary colours sitting opposite each other on the colour wheel, already this old roller has potential. I took lots of close ups of the colours, marks and shapes, I was starting to get a fizzy feeling about this old, rusty roller. 

So how can these quick snaps help me in my painting? It really is quite a simple process; here are 3 tips to help you get started.

Tip 1

Go through the images and edit them using the cropping tool, picking out the details that have interested you, this might be; colour combinations, shapes, textures or lines.

Duplicate the photo so that you can make several different crops of the same image. Try rotating the image to see how it looks, does it make you notice something different? Try putting the image into black and white, and also simplifying the shapes.

Close-up of an old rusty roller on grass, showing vibrant teal blue and rusty textures.

Tip 2

Print the images and make photocopies so you have a selection to play with. Next cut them up, rearrange and stick different combinations together. Be discerning in your choices.

Tip 3

Now that you have a few ideas, take out your sketchbook and create rough thumbnail sketches, at this stage you can tweak the composition. Try using black, white and grey. Concentrate on the shapes and negative shapes and keep it simple.

Close-up images of a rusty surface showcasing vibrant teal and orange colors, with one image displaying no color and the other saturated with color.

These three easy techniques start to spark ideas which might later end up in a finished painting. This playing stage is so much fun and there can be endless combinations. 

So even on a busy work day I can find time to see the joy in something that I walk past, elevating the everyday! Whether that is shape, colour, line, marks or texture, I pick out the elements that give me a nudge and that is all the starting point that I need. 

Sometimes these studies remain in my sketchbook as a record of the feelings, thoughts or experience I had at that specific time. They may inform other larger studies or even a body of work at a later date. Either way is fine by me, no pressure to create just enjoying something in what some people would just walk straight past.

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