My daily coffee spot at Cafe Grande—the best view of the port of Hydra, Greece
Greetings, friends and color aficionados across the globe!
Thank you for tuning in once more and reading my colorfully inspired blog here at LFB Color. I’m writing from a beautiful Greek island, one of three islands I’m visiting as part of a five-week travel journey in this, the beginning of the tourist off season in Greece.
I deliberately chose late September and all of October to be in Greece because quite frankly I don’t like crowds and tons of tourists obstructing my views. Pardon my selfishness in this, but I’m here to document as much as I can of the natural beauty of not only the landscape and architecture, but also the people, language, culture and customs.
In case you’ve not noticed, I am taking a new creative direction in color consulting. Where I’ve traditionally focused on architectural color consulting, my heart is truly, genuinely in the worlds of art through travel illustration and storytelling or chronicling.
To that end, I’ve decided to launch an entire art and travel campaign called Coloring My Way Across The Globe, which will feature the most colorful people, places and experiences off the beaten path both near and far.
I first discovered a love of and a proclivity for creating art in fashion design school back in the summer of 2014 during Fashion Sketching class. In fact, that class was the sole class in which I wasn’t shedding tears of frustration. All of the other fashion design classes, though I completed them with straight As, proved to be too technical for my creative brain and caused me many nights of tears and frustration. Haha! We live and we learn, no? I learned that year that art and color are my true passions AND talents, and nothing else matters to my free spirited, creative soul.
In a soon-to-follow blog post, I will tell you all about the sunset dining experience at Omilos in Hydra, Greece!
Let’s talk about what my new creative direction looks like. First of all, you will see me creating many colorful travel illustrations based on photography I take during my global travels. Like my 2021 series, Solitary Moments, set in Santorini, Greece, I will launch other series soon from each of the destinations in Greece I’ve visited this season. My art subjects tend to be architecture, landscape, and botanicals, though I dabble in abstracts and people. These travel illustrations of mine will tell their own stories and include mini travel itineraries on the back of each piece. It’s a little lagniappe—or bonus gift—for anyone who purchases my work.
My first travel based art illustrations in progress: Solitary Moments in Santorini, Greece
The art illustrations correlate perfectly to my other plan, which is to document my travels through blog posts, podcast interviews and general travel content. I’ve been tossing around the term “travel influencer” to describe this new role, but that feels a bit presumptuous to me. Yes, I travel a lot, and yes, I have insights, but do I truly INFLUENCE travel as of yet? I think not.
What I DO know is that I’m a travel enthusiast and conversationalist, a person who is passionate about fully immersive travel experiences that I wish to share with all of you. My title for now is simply: travel illustrator | conversationalist. How does that sound to you?
You, TOO, can have a day sailing cruise with Lefteris in Spetses, Greece. Stay tuned for details!
I hope that you all will join me on this exciting journey as I share with you the Coloring My Way Across The Globe tales of color, art, travel, language learning, culture, landscape, international exchanges and fascinating people I meet off the the beaten path. These are stories that you won’t find in typical travel guides and journals.
I’m looking to capture something unique and insightful, something that is more deeply rooted in culture, customs, and immersive experience than it is in mainstream tourist attractions. It’s off the beaten path as I say!
Until we meet again here, stay colorful, friends!
Your color strategist Lauren