Thoughts on Inspiration

Techniques for Working Out Artistic Ideas

I get asked a lot of questions about my artwork, especially by non-artists who see it for the first time. One question that always comes up whether the asker is an artist or not is "Where do you get your ideas?" I believe everyone has an artist within them but most people either believe they have no talent (my views on that subject can and probably will make up an entire article of it's own) or they are have no ideas for what to create and are stuck creating things only from kits or patterns if they create at all. The whole purpose of this article is to give my thoughts on how to stimulate your creativity and get ideas along with showing you how I get my ideas. I'm mainly a fantasy artist but this is definitely not limited to one genre of art and definitely not to any one medium. In my opinion it doesn't matter what your subject or medium of choice is, the process of creating ideas is the same regardless.

Every artist gets artists block at some point, so even if you don't need inspiration right now this might be of some interest to you anyway for those times when you're stumped for a new idea.

I suggest you get out some paper or open up a text program like notepad and write down these brainstorming exercises as you read it. For all of these I want you to write down everything that pops into your head, don't worry about if it sounds silly or if the idea is good. This is brainstorming, not everything needs to sound like a good idea right away, you're the only one who ever has to see anything you wrote down.

Step 1: What are your interests?

If you already know some broad subjects that you are interested in exploring, for example fantasy, animals, history, etc. you can skip down to Step 4.