The impulse of painting, and where your ideas come from

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Well, the title is straightforward enough.

For people who paint or draw (anything. not judging if you paint abstract or hyper-realism) how do you deal with the blank canvas? What makes you say "today I'll paint" or "this very moment I'll start painting this concept/idea/colors/textures/etc" ? Do you have a routine or you wait for the inspiration to strike? And finally, where do your ideas come from? mostly from real life experiences or from yourself, or from something else?
It would be amazing if you posted links to images for me to understand better, but that's just a plus

I haven't actually painted on canvas in several years, my primary mediums have always been pen and ink and colored pencil. When I paint now, it's in living skin as a tattooist.

There is no one source for ideas - sometimes they occur spontaneously from 'The Ether' (and I do strongly believe in such a thing as a 'Zeitgeist' - that certain concepts are just floating around 'out there' at certain moments, waiting for any brain that can apprehend them to snatch them out of the air and interpret them, from their own unique perspective).

Other times, I stitch separate ideas together from other sources, to create new patterns. This is especially common in creating tattoo designs, as there are a large number of iconic images that have been around for centuries, but are always open to reinterpretation by a new generation of artists and wearers.

And sometimes, I just doodle, until a particular image 'feels right' and seems to warrant further development, then I will work it up into a more fully realized concept.

Last edited by Willard on 30 Mar 2014, 2:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have never heard of Zeitgeist. For what you tell me and the quick research I made, seems like and interesting watch, as a lot of people seem to have very strong different views about it.
Maybe people don't stick to one creative process as I first thought, and everybody do what you do (to mix). I personally stick a lot (if not only) to watching the scratches of charcoal until I see something that is more than a drawing. Then I arrange it so it can be more understandable. Of course it doesn't have to be charcoal, it can be anything. In that sense the busy life of a city can be positive –at least!– and give you lots of ideas about shapes and patters and concepts.
Thank you for sharing your creations. It only seems fair I share one of mine as well:

Fascinating.

Leonardo recommended staring at blotches on the wall & trying to see shapes in them.

I draw, primarily pen and ink or graphite pencil, though now I am getting into color with markers and colored pens. My inspiration usually comes when I see something and wonder if I can make that come across on paper. I love to challenge myself. If I'm not doing something that stretches my skill, I get bored. I have no training whatsoever, so I guess I'm training myself by always pushing.

I just got my imagination back after a med change, so in the past month I started doing things from my imagination. One was Celtic knot inspired, and the other was a nature-oriented drawing with some new colored pens. Images pop into my mind as embodiments of some thought I was concentrating on, or of a strongly felt emotion (depression, usually).

Well I image that's intense. I get so frustrated so quickly that if I try to push myself too hard I end up with meltdowns. I do try to improve myself, but it's hard for me. I guess that for you is more compelling and exciting than scary?



But you do a lot of research then? To do something celtic orientated as accurate as possible? Excuse my lack of vocabulary but when you refer to "med charge" you mean that you where hospitalized? If that's so then I'm sorry, but good that you got out and with imagination that can sooth you. I remember that when I was on the psychiatric ward I draw a lot because it was the only thing I could do, and then when I got out I was filled with imagination and ideas I wanted to share, and weird enough I didn't felt the pressure of doing things perfectly (as I always do when I draw/paint/whatever). I wonder why is that

Da Vinci? Really? Well it is the most relaxing thing you can do, and very compelling when walking down the street, so I suppose everybody does it.

With me its a number of things. 1. I have to do it as its my latest muse. 2. It also acts as a distraction to life/mental health. 3. I enjoy it. 4. Trying to improve. 4. I see an image id like to replicate that "captures a moment" that resonates and i try and see if i can replicate that moment.

Interesting question! In my case, I rarely paint. I draw with digital media. Lately, I've pretty much only drawn using a software on the Nintendo 3DS, because it makes it really convenient. It's partially because I currently don't have any computers that can handle better software, but the biggest reason is the convenience. I hardly even need an impulse to draw; it just happens. Pretty much any free time becomes art time. On my lunch break at work, in line at the pharmacy, watching TV with my roommate, waiting in the doctor's office, listening to my mom trash-talk our extended family, too lazy to get out of bed. All the supplies, any half-finished pictures I might feel like working on, are always stored either in my purse on my bedside table, ready to be taken out or put away in as little as three seconds. I love it. If only it weren't a fairly crappy software in every other respect.

I went through some of my drawings and thought about what inspired them. It's various different things. Here are some recurring reasons (with examples):

I'm planning a graphic novel about mermaids, so I spend a lot of time thinking about the characters and settings. I also need to plan the appearance of things and practice drawing them in order to prepare for the comic. So I have a crap-ton of pictures of mermaids, mermaid activities, sea creatures, underwater seascapes, and so on.

I also have other stories going on in my head, some of which might get written some day, or are in progress, and some of which are just daydream material. I often want to draw stuff from those. Some of those head-stories are half-baked mental fanfics of stories I've seen from someone else. Sometimes that inspires fan art, but sometimes the resulting picture isn't obviously connected.

Sometimes when I'm thinking about something enough to draw it, that makes me think of even more pictures of that sort of thing. That contributes to the bulk of mermaid pics, but another example is that the other day I was watching Bob Ross videos on Youtube and it made me want to draw landscapes, and five landscapes later I still haven't gotten it out of my system.

Sometimes I draw things to get better at drawing it.

Songs have inspired several of my pictures.
http://colorslive.com/details/1973424
http://colorslive.com/details/2345197
http://colorslive.com/details/2923503
http://colorslive.com/details/2353037
http://colorslive.com/details/1986787
http://colorslive.com/details/1898877
http://colorslive.com/details/1846290
http://colorslive.com/details/1825021

Sometimes I do the "imagine things from the shapes of other things" thing (e.g. shapes in clouds or Leonardo's wall blotches). I get way too much inspiration from the humidity formations on my clear plastic shower curtain.

I think sex and romance are interesting even thought I'm aromantic and asexual. (This baffles the heck out of some people but whatever.) So I'm inclined to draw a lot of mushy romantic softcore porn, or sometimes just sexy people who aren't really doing anything. The gallery site associated with this software has some pretty strict (outright ridiculous) rules about whether a picture is classified as "mature" content, and it was kind of fascinating to see what would or wouldn't get flagged, so I had some pictures inspired by that, or just by an urge to sneak sex-inspired stuff under the radar. (The deviant art links are "mature" pictures on colorslive.com but not on deviant art.)

Sometimes I see something aesthetically pleasing and it makes me want to draw a related picture. Like, the flower designs on sanitary napkin wrappers or my roommate's cute ferrets. I've started a bunch of pictures that are just flower bouquets but haven't gotten any I want to post yet.

Some pictures are inspired by feelings, pets, or real-life occurrances, but there aren't many of those that don't also fall in one of the above categories.

Several pictures are motivated by more than one of these things.