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Thoughts on Artistic Inspiration
"The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas."
Linus Pauling
Where to look for Inspiration?
The places that you can go for inspiration are limitless. With so many artists publishing blogs and the incredible array of beautiful magazines, there are endless possibilities. I live in a smallish town and there are not a lot of places that I can go to view artwork. But I have found a well of inspiration on the Internet and through magazines.
Copyright
I feel that I need to mention copyright issues here. Be sure that you are not copying someone else’s designs without their permission. Drawing inspiration works like this for me: I see something that I really like and I ask myself what it is that I like most about this particular piece? I write down or mentally note those things and then figure out a way to use that concept in a different piece of work. Maybe it’s the materials that the artist used, the proportions, or even the colors. For more information on copyright, here is a link:
http://drawsketch.about.com/cs/resources/a/copyright.htm
Quality of the Inspiration
While it is true that you can get inspiration from anywhere and in anything, my suggestion would be to go for quality, especially if you are a beginning to intermediate artist in your field. An example of quality inspiration would be looking at museum work and high-end galleries and publications. I realized this because I’m somewhat of a magazine junkie and I was receiving too many magazines. I needed to cut down my subscriptions and the magazines that I purchased and so I made a list and prioritized the publications. High-end magazines were at the top of my list such as Art Doll Quarterly, Cloth, Paper, Scissors, and Stampington publications. When it was home décor that I was looking at, I culled the lower-end magazines from my list.
This is all about training your eye to look at good design. You don’t have to analyze an artwork to be able to benefit from it. Just learning to take in the images of higher quality artwork, which usually corresponds to better design, will train your eye and transfer to your own art making.
Inspiration How-To
Get a sketchbook and rip out the pictures that you like, that are particularly inspiring. Paste the pictures in your book and jot down what you like about that particular thing. Next, journal some ideas about how you might use this concept without violating the original artist’s rights. If you learn to look, to capture the image, and journal about it, you will further your abilities to create good design. This is true inspiration!
For more ideas and discussion about inspiration, visit the Message Board at That Creative Place under the topic, “Inspiration”.
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