Ideas Come From Where?

Right as I drift off to sleep. Bam ! I'm awake now.
Or upon waking in the morning - The paintings are right there formed in my head.
Trick is getting them down on paper - Pre Caffeine.

In the shower. I get most of my ideas about anything, art-related or not, while in the shower.

Ideas come when you allow your mind to wander - shower, driving, walking the dog.

Mr. Walker,

I tip my hat to you , you Teacher of Arts!

Oddly enough, I have no set pattern, it hits when it hits, like when milking a cow. Oddly enough, my most popular work has come to me when I seemed to have given the least amount of thought or effort. Which suggests that letting go may be the source for my creativity. For my commercial work, you dance when the piper plays.

My inability to define my creative sourcing sort of saddens me, because how do you harness such ideas when they come least expected, how do you encourage such moments? I have learned a long time ago to write down my ideas when they come, and have regretted those that I let slip away.

I can tell you when the ideas won't come...

-YoPedro

Any thing can spark one, a happy moment, a sad one, anger, really anything, the hardest Ideas to come by are the ones I try and come up with.

I know where there are some cows.....they have black and white spots. However they are boy cows missing their balls. I don't think it would work if I tried to milk them. So there goes my great ideas.

it's either when i'm telling myself to tell someone else of something, i get a good idea. or in the shower or in bed. the shower i think it's more noise based, i think it makes a theta type wave which helps you think creatively. otherwise it's looking at other things and just drifting.

---Mike Savad

i have no idea... they come when they come from wherever they come from i just have to be receptive to them...

Heaven. Wait....its little girls that come from heaven. I always get it mixed up. No wonder I don't have any great ideas.
'

Ideas come from the playful interaction between those rascally antipodes of ours.

I'm going to have to research antipodes Patrick. Then I will interplay and find me some ideas!

they come from out of nowhere for me...usually while im trying to sleep. ugh

Patrick, you MUST stop using all those big words! I used to know what they meant, but, alas.......

it's always a good idea to have a pad of paper by your bed, in the bathroom, and i have a phablet, so i can sketch something when an idea comes in. and provided i remember i did that, i can check on it when i need to.

---Mike Savad

In my research Marlene, there was some geography involved.....but never mind that! The crux of it is....I think, antipodes are opposite of the other. So.....thats where great ideas are found. Actually ..... Patrick may be on to something.

I'm talking about the antipodes of the mind, something Aldous Huxley brought up in his book, Heaven and Hell, as well as in his The Doors of Perception.

To spawn new ideas, I engage in daydreams through induction, by which I mean some internal means of triggering a daydream, either meditative or ASMR (autonomous sensory median response), and this slightly altered state of mind helps me quiet my inner voice long enough to push ideas into being. Yes, I have to give them a gentle nudge, sometimes a shove, but usually the most creative notions come about as the result of finding ways to make connections between things.

When I'm really stuck, I just ask myself, "What if...?" and fill in the blank, and no matter how silly it may seem at the time, it usually leads me to a place I haven't before visited...because you just never know.

Try it yourself: Think, 'What if,' and then think of something odd, such as, 'pigs could fly.'

See what I mean? I'll bet you filled your mind with the craziest visions of pigs on the wing you've ever imagined, because you pushed them into being. And the connection you made by linking a little porker with a pair of...hey! How about dragon wings? Or butterfly wings?

Most of my favorite ideas have been spawned as the result of pairing two seemingly disparate things.

My ideas spew right outta me onto the canvas. No preplanning

From everywhere! New ideas start small from someone, something, or my crazy dreams. Then from there I tweak or change the starting idea into something else to make it more mine

In all seriousness, yes dreams and day dreams are usually when things manifest for me. However where they go once I begin my work can change dramatically.

While driving, while watching tv. I once made a painting of a large yellow coffee cup with a happy smile on it with a red, white and black striped background just watching Grace from Will and Grace walk across a room holding a yellow cup, while wearing a red,white and black striped shirt. I titled it Happy Cup. It became a flag flown outside a little coffee shop.
I watch ALOT of travel shows and stuff just hits me right and an idea pops into my head. The more goes in my eyes and ears the more ideas come out. I also carry three small notebooks with me to put things I wanna GOOGLE for ideas, one for TO DO to put fully fleshed ideas in and steps, and one MOBILE NOTES that everything goes in to transfer to later. Wanna have a hard copy to thumb thru-not good at or like memos on fone. Outta site, outta mind.
Unfortunately my procradistractionation keeps the majority of them just that, ideas.

I don´t have good ideas. I should buy a cow, maybe ...

Dan,

I have a very visual mind. I can take an image and move it, twist it, play with it in my mind.

The image can be something I see while driving, or something I see anywhere,
or any of your images or any other images. When driving I can play around as if
I am taking photos in my mind. At night this can be very interesting. At least to me.

I can draw very easily with only a small amount of study time.

My mind's eye.

As I see one thing I can mix it with the next etc.

During the process of making my art I have looked closely
at one or two of the images I could use and remade those images to
my liking in my mind. Then I have made plans with those reworked images.

I have had to go back twice now to images and nix my plans. The starting
material was not what I had remixed. And I no longer liked the working material
of the original image. The process is very quick.

If I want ideas I have them. I can ask myself for working ideas one day if I have none
and within days have a slew of ideas.

I am ultra critical of all of my ideas. Some of my finished works will not be
posted here or elsewhere, not good enough. I'd say about 2/3 of my ideas are
good enough. And that if an idea is not good enough I can often rework it radically
into something very good. So I separately store in PS my poorer ideas. I might go back to
rework them.

In my personal life criticism is tough. When it comes to visual art, important word there
is visual, no amount of criticism is any trouble at all. I work visually on a much higher level than
with my auditory. My life could be falling down all around me, but if I am working visually I feel great.

Dave

Usually in my sleep. I go to sleep thinking about a problem, and when I wake up I have the answer. I should thank whoever it is in there that does that for me...haha

I think about this topic a lot. In my mind if we do not learn from the tradition one day the way of creation will close. This is what happening in pop culture. I am trying to learn from the past what ever i can get.
For me personally, I have been looking for the true self, find the truth behind the front.
And i have a notebook, write down my ideas everyday.

We're just receivers of information that already exists within the universe. All we have to do is tap in.

From reminiscences.

"All the really good ideas I ever had come to me while I was milking a cow". -Grant Wood How about you?

It varies from piece-to-piece and project-to-project.

I've gotten inspiration from an autumn day in the Berkshire Mountains, a dream that I had, music, something I wrote, something I read, something I saw, etc. It's hard to say any one thing. I guess the only thing that is common in all of them is me. So, it could be said that it comes from somewhere inside of me. Likely the brain part is involved. Then the spirit and hand.

I know how to milk a cow - learned at the milk barn when I was young - the only idea I ever got from milking was how to get someone else to milk the cow. Ideas usually come whenever they come - often when I'm doodling or when I see something - the problem with the 'seeing' something - I forget whatever the idea was by the time I can get to put it down on paper.

I am constantly bombarded with ideas. And while many of them are related to photography, many are not. I submit that it is that I am constantly looking for ideas I am able to come up with so very many. I only wish more of them were good ideas.

The vast majority of ideas I come up with are not very good ideas---while they may seem to be at the time of their inception---but I have had some that were actually not bad.

Walking, showering, watching tv, reading, driving, eta all, ideas come to me at different times and while doing different activities.

As far as where ideas come from? Well, they come from the mind.

@ Patrick.... Sensitive to serendipity is an excellent quality. When searching for an answer to one question one may often find ideas that lead to answers to a completely different question.

And yes, this is a “place”---as it were---where I come up with new ideas.

Thanks! going to close this now.