Welcome to Gaia! ::

It depends on what I want to do. Mostly, I keep looking at works by other artists. I spend time at Conceptart, ImagineFX, and other gallery/communities. I also play games. Reading gives you no end of inspiration. Writing helps too.

Sometimes, it depends on subject matter. I like scary art, so I watch scary movies and make note on visual effects (not special effects, but the overall visual direction). I watch a lot of cartoons. (I'm a cartoonist.)

Inspiration is all around. Sometimes, though, you're tired or just tense. If you can't turn that into something on paper, then try and relax. (It's a good idea to doodle when you don't feel like you can do anything. Even scribbles. Doodles can become something more later when you refer to them looking for inspiration. Doing studies can give the same results.

Sometimes, it pays to just go "relax" someplace private and quiet. That helps me a LOT when I have too much on my mind to be productive.

Daft as it may sound I am quite a vivid dreamer, and quite often have weird or bizarre dreams that I can often conjure ideas from. However, I sometimes lose my 'drawing swing' as I call it, the sort of motivation and desire to continue drawing, when this happens I try to relax and wait until something comes to me.

However, if I really need to get a piece of art done I'll just scribble for a while, get in a huff. . . Then put the doodle pad away and grab a cup of tea (once I even tried deep breathing... A sort of meditation/relaxation technique.) After drinking said cup of tea I whack the doodle pad back out, make my peace with it and try again. I repeat this process a few times and if theres STILL nothing I'll wait a couple of days before trying again.

For me, sometimes I'm just simply NOT in the artsy mood. It's annoying, but sometimes that side of your brain can go into overdrive and shut down, whilst the logical side of your brain yells at it to work. xD Pretty funny if you think about it...

I talk WAY too much. XD whee

When I'm really hurting for inspiration I'll play game sound tracks and stuff like that and let my mind wander or depending on what mood I'm in I'll just listen to my regular collection of every genre of rock (emo, punk, grunge, nu metal, J-rock, more emo, and any other good rock I can find.) I'll also play video games, surf the web for art, write, study objects for a long time and try to see how i could turn it into something else or try to imagine a real world thing in a different style razz and sometimes I kind of just meditate omg I'm a weirdo lol like some kinda wannabe emo monk.

Cool ideas. Gotta try some of those.

Thanks for sharing! ^_^

Sometimes fruit teas actually, but more often than not your average kind of tea.

But I like mine milky, with two sugars and quite weak, so the caffeine intake is relatively small hehe. (I'm British - ye cannot deny me my tea! xD) But sweet milky drinks actually release a happy hormone or something, I can't remember it off the top of my head, but there is definitely some kind of reaction between the breakdown of the sugar and the lactose, gives you that content sorta feeling... Not endorphins but something else.

So yah, I don't get twitchy... Much. xD

I honestly don't know. I get images in my head... all the time. Without any provocation. A lot of times, when I'm trying to think up a joke or a response, it'll come up in my brain as a really weird image, and I get all choked up because I just don't have the words to explain it.

When I get art blocks (which happens really, really often), it's not because I can't think of anything to draw, it because it feels like I physically can't draw them. I'll sit down and try, but nothing will come out, nothing will work. It takes waayyy too much effort to try to get simple lines down... if I force myself through it, what is normally a ten-minute-sketch lasts several hours, and it's grindingly dull... I can never finish them. It's like I can't get in the 'zone', so to speak, and I can't draw unless I'm in that particular mindset. So I end up going months without drawing anything.

If I'm trying to get a huge spamfest of ideas, though, then I'll usually pace around the coffee table like a madman. Moving gets blood flowing to the brain, which stirs up creative juices.

i also get that...quite a lot of it actually in the last few days..i simply don't know what to draw and want to draw (even when i really have to)...


i'm not sure where the heck i'm getting my ideas... i juststart doodling and when i think it looks good i'l redraw it again..but better...