Where do my ideas come from?

I get asked this all the time so I thought I would explain my process of gathering ideas.  Everything around me influences, shape, colour, nature, buildings, patterns, textures and much more.

I like draw, I am not an artist, I draw in my own style, it helps me to process what I have seen or recalled from memory or in most cases a mash made up imaginary world.  Mostly doodling as this is my way of generating little gems that I want to develop further. 

As Halloween season is fast approaching I started with pumpkins! 

This is a mixture of drawings and painting on other paper then cut and stuck in this book, I guess a kind of collage. This was the finished page.

I should mention this book, I decided to start this book, the pumpkins were my first doodle.  This book I hope to use regularly as a way of offloading ideas and things I just want to draw.  Being autistic my head never switches off, I am constantly thinking about things.  

The next page I decided to create leaves, all aspects of nature fascinate me, again a kind of collage. I like to add pattern to shapes to make them more interesting.

At the moment I am happy using water coloured paint and watercolour pencils, I may switch to just fine liner or other mediums.  I am just going with what I feel at the time.

This next one 'Houses' literally took me just over an hour! I wanted a quick result, not searching for realism.  I was exploring colour, shapes and placement.

Back to nature next with 'Fungi and Mushrooms', I chose to add the name of what I wanted to draw to each page as it just made sense to me to do that. I really liked creating this page as it reminded me of all the lovely mushrooms and fungi I have stitched.

Sticking with nature I decided a plants page was needed! I love house plants, having nature so near makes me happy. I do not have an outside space sadly, so I bring plants to me!

The next page I created was trees, in a fun shape gathering way! Thats the thing with me, I just create things I like so if it means odd shaped trees, it's that! 

Today I wasn't feeling colour at all so created a black and white then a monochrome page.  Not sure if you all know but without my Irlens tinted glasses I only see monochrome, no colour at all.  The specialist tint gives me colour and it's actually really amazing however some days I find it too vibrant and return to my monochrome world.

My Irlens tinted glasses, each tint is made up of a combination of colours.

I find drawing a great way to generate loads of ideas for designs I may want to hand embroider. Developing my drawings further helps me to process what I will create with embroidery, what colours to choose and how I will do it if it is 3 dimensional. 

Do you enjoy drawing?

Until next time...