where do you get your inspiration?

hi, im realy woundering where do you personaly get your inspiration from?

i am reasonably good at drawing however every time i get a piece of paper and a pen infront of me my mind goes blank and i find myself unable to think of anything to draw :(
im currently looking to my dreams for inspiration which is helping build dream recall but im finding my dreams are too sureal to be able to draw them, hopeing that with my next LD i can find some inspiration or maby find inspiration within one of your replys :)

When I do anything arty, like writing a bit of a story, I think of real book authors and what they do, how they thought of it. Often I just think of insane things, like pink floating rubber ducks, then let my mind slowly make it into an proper story type thing - ie: the pink floating rubber duck incident of 2039AD, where an shipment of pink floating rubber ducks was being delivered to Earth from Mars, which is now an industrial planet completely dominated by America...etc etc. I just made that up see.

I get ideas for my paintings, from the paintings I see in my lucid dreams. I don't have to be imaginitive or artisticly inclined, I just have to wait. You can see my many paintings from lucid dreams at my personal website. [link removed]

Lots of times when I draw -- especially in class -- I just start out with a head and go from there, and let the mood of the day and the lecture guide my hand. I've done some of my best drawings during lectures. Out of class, sitting at my computer with post-its, I usually get inspired by whatever music I'm listening to, combined with whatever I've just been looking at.

i get inspiration from music and pretty people :)

I find myself with too much inspiration and not enough talent. There is so much I would like to be able to convey but I'm not good enough to do a good job of it.

i find my inspiration in many different places. sometimes i like to take a persons fears, and create a rendering of them in a surreal manner.
also, i sometimes find inspiration by looking at the whole world as a single object. (meditate on that for a while and see where it takes ya)

most of the time, for my less serious projects, i just listen to music and try to translate the meaning of the lyrics into something visual.

the stain on my shirt

Somtimes I think that if you make yourself draw, paint, write or whatever, even if you are just working on a still life that your creative juices will begin to flow. Dry spells happen, but somtimes preserverance can overcome that. If you have talent just rendering anything down can sprout a good idea.

Something I do for inspiration that is actually quite easy is Doodle Scribbles. Works well for poetry as well as 2d or 3d artwork. Just get a piece or paper and a writing utensil, make a completely random scribble on it (this is the part you must adhere to... look away from the paper or have someone else do it if need be. Believe it or not some people have a problem with this.), then see what your imagination makes of the scribble and complete the drawing. Even turn the paper around and around until something pops out at you. You need not spend very long on each drawing, just enough time to make it obvious to you or to someone else what it is that "popped out" and then go on to the next until you feel sufficiently inspired. I find this is a good thing to practice regularly even if you're not suffering from a dry spell.

Another type of imagination exersize I do that is more literary that artsy (for anyone who isn't inclined to drawing) is free-writing. Just write whatever comes to mind. Even if what you write is "I have nothing to write about" just keep going. I don't mean keep writing that over and over but follow up with something like "because my brain is a pink banana that has no thoughts etc." I hope you get the idea.

If you want some inspiration for those blank moments, let this place chisel away at your writers/artists block:

www.seventhsanctum.com

It's a website packed to the brim with random generators. They have all kinds of things like random story generators, weapon makers, character creators and also humourous things like the "Questionable Spell generator" which generates spells like "Beam of Haletosis" and "Pornography Cage"

I beat my inspiration out of a man called John from London, the cunt usually gives me all the information i need so i dont have to get off my arse and do any work.

Frontier of Mystery
Gateway of the Anti Androids
Mutant City
Mysteries Metropolis

http://www.seventhsanctum.com

That site is cool man. I guess John can relax for a while, that cunt!