Inspirational Things to Draw: How to Build Your Own Drawing Library so You Don't Run Out of Ideas!

Are you looking for things to draw? To be a successful artist, start to build up some good online and offline resources so you can reference ideas for drawing anytime!

This is because, as a budding professional with your own artistic goals, you need to have art inspiration. Unfortunately, inspiration is not something that can be forced!

Rather, it is something that just happens. For that purpose alone, you need to create your own library of drawing resources to help it along. The more reference materials you have, the higher the chances you will get inspired!

As art inspiration can come from just about anything, I will recommend a few places to build up your own personal library of drawing inspirations. There's no way around it. No matter how good you are, all artists need references at one point in time.

Look for things to draw from picture books

Art takes references, combining it with their own experiences, and choosing what is important based on their artistic foundations, that good art can be made. Your first place to find any kind of art inspiration comes from physical media.

Whether it be from magazines, comic strips, reference manuals, photos, or even coupons, each pictorial source adds to your collection of experiences that are important to you.

After all, you bought a book or magazine because it appealed to you in some form or another. That's why you should take note of your interests and begin studying each of the sources.

things to draw

Things to look for in each picture are:

Perspective
Object shapes
Shading and lighting
The organic forms (humans, animals, etc)
The inorganic forms (building designs, furniture fixtures, etc)
Color composition

These are just some of the things you can pick up. As long as you keep an open mind about what to look for and to study these elements, you can start building up a mental library fairly easily starting with the stuff you love!

Excellent resource:

Looking for things to draw through genre

Don't limit yourself to one genre. Drawing references comes from different genres that may not be related to your own. For instance, let's say your niche is cars.

You can use what you know about cars to create futuristic vehicles or your own mechanical spiders that is not related to cars in any way.

Start organizing your pictorial sources into different possible genres. In such cases, a magazine about leisure can have picture references about boats or seascape scenery you can utilize in the near future.

things to draw

Some genres to think about are (but not limited to):

Fantasy and history
Science fiction
Action and romance
Comics and cartoons
Sports and leisure

By organizing the pictorial references of what you already have, you can see missing links to genres that you can begin collecting about. That way, you can 'fill in the blanks' as slowly build your repertoire of images!

Looking for things to draw from the real world

Perhaps the best way to get inspiration comes to life is from physical forms through other artists. In that sense, you will know how they did that at least!

Stuff like statues are a result of an idea drawn on paper that has turned into a physical three dimensional form that we see in real life. Even canvas works from other artists shows how they think and interpret lighting, shading, and perspective.

Therefore, these inspirations are an excellent source to grab references from since it shows you ideas that have already advanced passed the simple drawing phase.

things to draw

If you haven't already, grab a recording device (a sketchbook, camera, video camera, etc) and start recording things from the real world that you think may come in handy such as:

Cars and mechanics
Houses and buildings
Furniture and electronics
Animation and movies
Sculptures and mannequins (for body references)

I could go on and on. The main point is that you start looking at stuff where you can think about how shapes are formed into 3d objects from flat drawings.

Seeing things mentally in 3d will improve all your regular drawings. It is a skill that all artists need and one that you can profit from as it allows you to create very convincing art!

Excellent resource:

Looking for things to draw from digital media

For a site that focuses on digital painting, there's no way I would forget this important source! The Internet is a wonderful place for references provided that you know where to look.

You can simple do an image search from your favorite search engine to yield amazing results about a subject you like or want to learn. With the digital medium, there is no shortage of inspiration.

Not only that, there are many digital artists out there that would gladly post their digital paintings online. Some artists are more than happy to explain how they do their digital paintings if one should ask!

things to draw

Use this to your advantage and study their techniques carefully. You want to make a mental note of their digital paintings, then applying what you will learn from this site, into a digital painting of your own.

One more important source are from online photos. You can either pay for stock photos from online photo services, or you can go open-source and hit up the Wikimedia Commons to find high resolution pictures (all free!) of something you like.

Start collecting what you can and build up your own personal reference libraries. After all, there is no artist out there which is 100% original.

It's an artist that takes previous ideas, combining it with his or her experiences, putting out his or her unique spin on it, and using his or her own style to create something 'original.'

Only when you build up a nice collection, you can start looking at the things you have collected to help you create original things to draw that are not only convincing, but profitable!