The Process of Creating

I recently posted on my Artfire blog about creative inspiration and it got me to thinking.....

Once you find a source of creative inspiration, how does it translate for you? What is the required process needed to interpet the inspiration? How many paths are you led down before you decide on a medium to express what you see in your minds eye? Which one do you choose first or is there only one choice? The space you create in what does that look like and how does it serve you, or hold you back?


When I was in high school, we had a career class that we could take. I spent some time in the career center, when I decided I wanted to do something in Art. I found this article about a designer who took pictures out of magazines and photos and kept them all in files for inspiration. This process always stuck with me.

I find magazine ads to be inspiring. So some of the pages in one of my sketch books looks like this,

And This,

Honestly I think these leggings are relevant again, some 15 years later.  I mean even the shoes, hello, cute.
So do you keep files in cabinets or do you paste them in sketch books?  This is what I do;

Some times, I have been puzzling an idea and it comes to me at night watching TV and so, the idea will float around on a piece of paper like this one.......

The idea needs a little fine tuning, but in the mean time I made the first proto type. Sometimes when an idea hits I am at my desk by my laptop and this happens....

the beginning results of this can be seen in my Studio for sale. Last week when we went to the beach , I came home with.....

It has inspired my summer collection, more about that later. 
I hope you start thinking about your process for creating art.  Let me know what you like to do.  Is it vision boards, or photos, or trips up the coast, flowers in garden?