Inspiration—what it is

They say that there are no original ideas anymore.

Well whom, may I ask, is “They?”

We all know what THEY^ would say about art.

And who are “they” to say what’s original or not?  Art is and always will be a product of what the artist is inspired to do.  Who cares if it’s been done before? No one is going to have the EXACT same take on the EXACT same thing, even if you try to. What matters most is doing art that you are inspired to do…..

…Or if you prefer (and or can’t produce inspiring art 24/7), gathering art that inspires you.

It takes all kinds of people and things to create one singular piece of art.  It takes the artist, who has either had training or not in the preferred medium, it takes the things the artist is inspired by, and it takes the people looking at and truly “paying the price of admission” of the finished artwork (we’ll talk about the price of admission in a later post).  But the motivating force behind the creation of that singular piece is the inspiration behind it; that one wish the artist has that they want to put forth into the world.

AH! The “They.”

This is the TRUE “They.”  The artist who has the original idea, for one cannot think exactly like another.  If I tell a class of students, some proficient artist and some who have no formal training at all, give me an image of a man and his dog, how many different interpretations do you think I would receive?  Here’s some from a Yahoo search.  I typed in the search box “a man and his dog” and out came 141,000 images of exactly that.  Some are paintings, most are photography, but all of them depict an image that had inspired the artist, whether they knew it or not. 

This brings me to the other point I made at the top of the post:  gathering art that inspires you.

And before you say it, I ABSOLUTLY DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE ENDORSE PLAGIARISIM!!!!!! 

But I DO endorse having resources that you can have as inspiration, references, or just as pretties to look at and admire.  Think of it this way:  in the days of the Masters (Leonardo Da Vinci, Goya, Monet, etc.), they didn’t have photography or even *GASP* the Internet to gather references for their paintings and sculptures.  They had to have models stand there for hours on end and even come back and sit in the same pose for days or weeks in order for the artists to finish a work. 

Vermeer and his model

I myself have a few file cabinets as well as a few folders short of a whole hard drive full of reference and inspiration photographs.  There are artists I know that have whole studios full of them.  These photographs are there to help me with references for poses, clothing, posturing and facial expressions, as well as many others.  If I see a picture that instantly grabs my attention, will I grab it if I can? Of course!  It may come in handy to see how the artist used light to enhance or distort the picture, or maybe it shows me how the artist laid the paint on the canvas in a new and different way than I did.  Maybe I like the image and I don’t have time to really take a look at it then so I’ll grab it to look at and pay the price of admission later.  The point is, if you see an image that inspires you or grabs your attention in any way - grab it.  It may come in handy later.

There are also places on the web (as demonstrated by my search earlier) that you can go to for images.  All the search engines are good places to start, but remember if you only search Yahoo, you’ll be limited to only what Yahoo has to offer. Here’s the same search on Google:

There are also stock image galleries, such as Getty Images and Shutterstock.  These places provide royalty free images, usually you can access them just by signing up, although most want you to pay money for the images, since most of the images are for businesses to use in their advertising.  You can also hit up your photographer friends to share their images with you. You may even be able to help them out in return, letting them use you for portfolio work or some such.

But if you haven’t thought about gathering images, start by going through your average day and take pictures with a cell phone or put a cheap point and shoot disposable camera in your pocket and see how many pictures you can find in one day.  Don’t go looking for them though, let them come to you. 

Here's a man who knows the mystery of a good cup of coffee...or does he?